Ralph Benko served as a deputy general counsel in the Reagan White House and worked closely with the George W. Bush administration as a contractor in its domestic policy initiative to find and rescue human trafficking victims. He lives in Maryland.

“As Maine goes, so goes the nation” was, for about a century, a political maxim. Recently, the political junkies in the capital were obsessing about the Platner vs. Collins race.

Wrong race!

Understandable, for those card-carrying members of the Columnist Party. The U.S. Senate majority, a very big deal, may hinge on that race. And that race was spiced up by the salacious and unseemly stories about the winner of the Democratic primary.

With that said, hey, junkies? Platner vs. Collins always was the wrong race to put on the marquee of your political theater. The real bellwether race  is the governor’s contest between Bobby Charles and Hannah Pingree.

The political dynamics that have emerged or are emerging is less Republican vs. Democrat and more establishment insiders (Hannah Pingree, former speaker of the Maine House, whose family name has been a prominent fixture in Maine politics for over 30 years) vs. popular insurgents (Bobby Charles, on his first electoral foray).

Charles is fashioning his affordability program via a classic center-right Republican free market platform. Pingree is fashioning her affordability solution via a classic center-left Democratic public works and pro-regulatory platform.

Full disclosure, as chairman of the 190,000-Facebook follower Capitalist League, I lean center-right. My own preferences revealed, there is more to this race than programmatic preferences.

The Charles vs. Pingree race is the perfect microcosm of the national political culture.

I was a lifelong Democrat until the sensible Democratic Party left me for left field. And there they go again. The progressive Mills-Pingree-Platner party ghosts the FDR/JFK/Bill Clinton Democrats. 

Bobby Charles — who worked in the Reagan White House and later directly for Colin Powell —  is a modern Reaganesque figure, aligning himself with the sensible Maine population, including independents and traditional Democrats, offering common-sense policies.

Charles is running on the Republican line. Yet he has the kind of “man of the people” values that FDR embodied and Middle America embodies. 

Yes, there is a lot of crazy going on in the GOP now. Charles, however, embodies classical Republican radical pragmatism. He’s not an ideologue, and is exempt from the fanaticism that so plagues our politics today. Charles is neither a zealot nor a moderate. He’s simply … capable.

Meanwhile the Democrats now, wholesale, are nominating “democratic socialists.” Wait, what? History has repeatedly shown that socialism doesn’t work, locally or nationally. 

The further left you move, the more it never works. Remember Jimmy Carter’s misery index? (That’s what forced me out of my once beloved Democratic Party.) 

Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes. Let’s do sane for a change.

Hannah Pingree presents as an honorable and capable public servant. That said, she will, if elected, be badly constrained by the romantic-but-dysfunctional emerging narrative of her party, now in thrall to its fanatical base, listing so far to portside that it is about to capsize the ship of state.

Maine is one of the states most guided by common sense. Its voters will embrace the candidate with a proven agenda for affordability and security rather than a member of the party who is admittedly charming but impractically romantic (Bernie, AOC, Zohran, etc).

While the nation scratched its head at Maine’s oddly out of sync “oyster farmer” there was, and is, a more meaningful race afoot. Many who have known Bobby Charles for decades and watched him serve his country unflinchingly think he, considered a dark horse, is the odds-on favorite to pull an upset and bring common sense and real management skills to Maine’s governance.

So, political junkies? Now that Platner vs. Collins has ended, please turn your attention to the true marquee Maine race, Charles vs. Pingree. For as Maine goes, so goes the nation.

The day after hundreds of locals poured into the streets of Biddeford, Maine in protest of ICE’s killing of 26-year-old Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero on Monday, I drove through the former mill town. It seemed eerily still, as if in shock. When the horrors of Minneapolis and Houston come to your small corner of New England, what can you do?

In Mechanics Park in Biddeford, a small but diligent group presented one answer: you keep showing up.

“When I woke up this morning, I knew that this was the place I should go right to,” said Wayne Miller, 71, a retired pilot of 35 years and resident of Beverly, Massachusetts. “This is my backyard. This is my neighborhood.”

He paused, then started to cry. “I’m ashamed of my country. I love the country. I’m ashamed.”

Miller was standing with a sign that read “Dissent while you still can” at the corner of Mechanics Park in Biddeford, where the protest and vigil for Guerrero had been held the day before. A nearby chain-link fence served as a memorial, lined with flowers, signs, and letters of grief and apology for Guerrero and his family. One read, “3-year-olds should be watching Bluey, not their fathers being executed.” Above a “No Trespassing” sign, someone had placed another: “Biddeford was built by immigrants.”

I spoke with Miller and others who had come out on Tuesday to continue expressing their grief for their neighbor, the second person killed by federal agents in less than a week.

“It’s one thing to see a news story from a distance,” said Tessa, 28, a waitress and resident of Biddeford. “But watching it happen close to home, it really recontextualizes the safety that you feel walking around in your neighborhood.”

For Linda Henry, 27, a retired firefighter and Gloucester, Massachusetts resident, it was only a matter of time. “I know that it doesn’t matter where you live. It’s going to happen, you know. ICE is going to come.”

Guerrero was a Colombian citizen who lived in Biddeford, Maine with his partner and 3-year-old daughter. He is one of at least nine people killed by federal immigration agents since the start of Donald Trump’s second term. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin claims Guerrero “weaponized” his vehicle during a traffic stop. But similar claims by DHS have quickly fallen apart after video footage of shootings has come to light.

Reports say that not only was Guerrero authorized to legally work in the US, but he wasn’t the target of ICE’s operations that day. 

Katie, a 48-year-old educator from New Hampshire, shared her anger. “A gun is not a license to kill. These agents have no business drawing their guns,” she said. “They aren’t judge, jury, and executioner, and they don’t have the right to be killing people the way that they are.”

“We were taught from the time we were little, ‘liberty and justice for all.’ We were taught that the United States was a place for everyone, and the current regime has changed that,” Katie continued.

Most of the protesters were standing with signs on the sidewalk along the adjacent intersection, shouting “ICE OUT” while passing cars honked. Near the memorial, a man on a bike caught my eye. He was off to the side, alone, quietly reading the letters addressed to Guerrero.

He introduced himself as Diego, 30, a restaurant worker and Biddeford resident. “I knew the guy. He was always around,” he said. “I was working and I was about to cry, to be honest. Because it’s injustice, you know? I’m an immigrant, and this country was built for immigrants.”

“We work, we pay taxes. We also need rights, as everybody does,” he said. “It’s not about left or right. It’s not about a political party. It’s about human rights.”

He told me that while he’s never felt disrespected by his neighbors and the people of Biddeford are good, the government is not the same. He said he feels unsafe and his community of immigrants feels like it’s hiding. 

“How many need to die for us to understand?” Diego said. “He’d got a kid, a little daughter. And that’s the most devastating. Because, you know, if I do something wrong, I can say ‘I’m sorry, I apologize.’ But he’s dead. There’s no apology that can bring him back, you know? He’s dead. I can’t even believe it, I can’t even believe this is happening.” 

When I asked Diego why he had stopped on his bike, he said out of solidarity—for Guerrero, for his partner and daughter. And when I asked what he would say to his community, he said, “Thank you for all the solidarity of people. Thank you for all the understanding. And I hope we can stop the violence.”

And while this is the role that many Democratic leaders would be expected to play in this situation, this crop of candidates has an added challenge.

Because this also means there are no meaningful distinctions among the candidates to help guide the eventual 601 delegates who will decide who should run in one of the most closely watched Senate contests in the country.

Indeed, the practical political impact of the tragic situation in Biddeford on the Maine Senate contest is this: What was expected to be an intense two-week primary campaign has effectively been reduced to one week. And the week currently being overtaken by the shock and anger is likely the most crucial.

That’s because 5 p.m. Wednesday is the deadline for supporters to sign up to become delegate candidates for the July 25 statewide convention in Bangor.

Those delegate candidates will then be elected at caucuses held in each of the state’s 16 counties over this coming weekend. From that process will come the 601 delegates who will decide which Democrat will challenge five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins this fall.

In fact, the best organized campaigns will likely know by Sunday who has already won the contest because they can simply add up how many of their own supporters became delegates.

In other words, the contest could be effectively over before most Mainers even begin to really pay attention.

Further, unlike some major news developments that provide a moment of political clarity, this tragic situation in Biddeford resolves nothing. Instead, it raises the stakes for Democrats to make the right choice.

What that means in the context of choosing between a more progressive populist candidate in the mold of Platner or a more traditional Democrat in the mold of this year’s Democratic nominee for governor, Hannah Pingree, remains an open question.

There is simply less time now to discuss it.

Now, none of the above is meant to take away from the discussion about a husband and father who was killed by the government and whatever circumstances led to that tragedy.

To be sure, the moment a Democratic nominee is selected, the role of ICE will immediately become the first real dividing-line issue in the Senate race. After all, Collins oversees ICE’s budget as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and has been actively involved in conversations with the administration about enforcement in Maine.

But as to who should face her, the clarity and contrasts that campaigns tend to reveal are not currently there among Democrats at a time when they would be most helpful. As it stands, all of the candidates oppose the Trump administration’s overall agenda, oppose the Iran war, promote some version of an affordability message, and, above all, oppose Collins.

Nor is there an obvious choice if Maine Democratic delegates decide electability should be their highest priority.

Campaigns rarely unfold on the timetable candidates expect. Outside events intervene, reshaping what voters hear, what campaigns can talk about, and, ultimately, what party insiders have to evaluate.

In this case, Democrats face the unusual challenge of selecting a Senate nominee while the issue dominating the public conversation is one on which nearly all of the candidates already agree. That may produce unity after a bruising week, but it also leaves delegates with fewer opportunities to distinguish between the people asking for their votes before making one of the biggest political decisions in Maine this year.

James Pindell is a Globe political reporter who reports and analyzes American politics, especially in New England.