Politics
Maine Democrats grapple with who is best to take over Graham Platner’s movement
Maine Democrats want to hold onto Graham Platner’s progressive base — but they can’t agree on who is best positioned to carry the torch.
That indecision is creating a fractured field heading into an unpredictable late July nominating convention for one of the most important Senate races on the 2026 map. Now, various candidates are rushing to prove they are the most aligned with Platner’s policies, without tying themselves too closely to the disgraced oysterman.
Labor organizations and the national progressive organizing group Our Revolution are backing former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, who campaigned with Platner during the primary and got the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for his unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign earlier this year. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a former Platner surrogate, is also behind Jackson, as are dozens of current and former state lawmakers.
But some state legislators and local activists who had backed Platner are flocking to Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who similarly ran as a progressive in the gubernatorial primary. And former public health official Nirav Shah is touting more progressive policy positions than he did when he ran for governor in an attempt to break off some Platner supporters. Behind the scenes, he is also working to recruit former organizers from Platner’s campaign, according to two people familiar with the strategy and granted anonymity to discuss it.
The trio of former gubernatorial candidates are the leading figures in a crowded field aiming to win over a yet-to-be-selected group of 600 Democratic delegates. Part of that task is convincing Platner’s former supporters that they will carry on the progressive advocacy and fighting spirit that made his candidacy so popular — before he was forced to resign after Blue Light News reported a woman said he had sexually assaulted her. Platner has denied the allegation.
Many of the candidates will make that pitch directly during a debate scheduled for Thursday night. And the stakes couldn’t be higher for national Democrats watching anxiously: Unseating Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is an essential part of the party’s plan to take back control of the Senate this fall.
Platner convincingly won the Democratic Senate primary last month with nearly three quarters of the vote, and had a zealous base of support during the primary. But where his voters and core volunteers go next is unclear.
“People who were vocal supporters of Platner’s have moved to other candidates, and it doesn’t look to me like they moved in a block, that everyone agrees who’s the best next candidate from that movement,” said David Farmer, a Maine Democratic political strategist not involved with the Senate campaign. “And I think that in a truncated process like this, that’s to be expected.”
In just 11 days, Democrats will replace their nominee at a convention in Bangor. This weekend, they will select the delegates who will pick that candidate — a process playing out across all of the state’s 16 counties, with campaigns seeking to recruit and organize delegates who will vote in their favor.
Unions, who were a key Platner booster in his primary against Gov. Janet Mills, have largely gone to Jackson, a logger and longtime union member. The Maine AFL-CIO endorsed Jackson over the weekend, citing his support of workers’ issues in the Maine legislature, along with his track record of winning over rural and working-class voters.
Some of Platner’s biggest supporters in the state House are beginning to coalesce around Bellows, however. That includes state Rep. Valli Geiger, who had been floated by Platner as a potential replacement before she passed on a run. In a Facebook post, Geiger cited Bellows’ track record of standing up to President Donald Trump as secretary of state, along with the fact that she “did not declare as a candidate until after Graham Platner announced he was withdrawing from the race unlike the unseemly rush of so many ambitious men.”
Reached via text, Geiger declined to be interviewed about her support for Bellows.
State Rep. Gary Friedmann, who also previously endorsed Platner, said he is all-in for Bellows. While he agrees with Jackson’s stances and called his association with Sanders and Our Revolution “very compelling,” Friedmann hinted at something Democrats have voiced worry about behind the scenes: That Jackson struggles as a compelling public speaker.
“When it comes to standing up, if there’s a debate with Susan Collins, or the messaging that comes from both candidates, I think Shenna is extremely articulate and compelling,” Friedmann said.
He added: “I think that having a woman to voice that platform is gonna be very important.”
All of the candidates are still figuring out exactly how to capture Platner’s support without tying themselves too closely to him as an individual. A letter circulated by former Platner campaign volunteers that racked up hundreds of signatures as of Tuesday called for the candidate replacing him to adopt a string of progressive commitments on issues including health care, housing and ending “forever wars.” Both Jackson and Bellows signed onto the letter.
During a virtual rally hosted by Our Revolution on Monday, Jackson took time to “acknowledge what everyone on this call has been through” while asking Platner’s supporters to rally behind him, though he never mentioned the oysterman by name.
“I know that there’s real pain, anger, disappointment, and I’m not going to try and to minimize that,” Jackson said. “But look, this movement has always been bigger than one person. It’s about taking on a system rigged against working people.”
Joseph Geevarghese, who runs Our Revolution, called on the movement Platner emboldened to get involved in the delegate process outlined by the Maine Democratic Party.
“This is the perfect opportunity for us to show the establishment that we can organize and win within the system that they created, the Democratic Party process,” he said on the call.
A person close to Bellows, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, also acknowledged this dilemma for candidates, calling it “a really delicate dance to walk.”
“It’s not like she’s trying to be Graham Platner or be someone she’s not,” the person said. “She is able to be herself, and I think she, ideologically, is a great bridge for people who were very disheartened by what happened with Platner, but still extremely pissed off about Susan Collins and the Senate majority, and what’s happening in Washington, D.C.”
While Shah’s campaign is recruiting former Platner supporters behind the scenes, the former public health official is also making the pitch explicit in public comments.
“I want all former Platner supporters to know: you have a place in this campaign,” Shah wrote on social media shortly after he launched his candidacy last week.
Maine politics was rocked on Monday by ICE agents’ shooting of a 26-year-old man in Biddeford, with potential Senate candidates rallying around getting the federal agency out of Maine. For many Democrats, it was also a reminder of the importance of supporting the party’s eventual nominee, regardless of who it is.
Democratic State Rep. Morgan Rielly, a former supporter of Platner’s, said he told Jackson that he would support him in the primary. But more important, he said, was the goal of defeating Collins this fall.
“[The Democratic nominee] will have my full support and I will be working hard to get them elected,” Rielly said in a text message. “It’s absolutely crucial we are united and Senator Collins loses on election day.”
Politics
Poll: Americans say the White House has shifted its deportation campaign. They’re still not buying it.
Republicans are struggling to reverse the damage President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda has done with voters.
With less than 90 days until the midterm election, the Trump administration has sought to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials out of the headlines, pulling back on the high-profile, flashy raids in blue cities and minimizing public clashes with community members and protesters.
But new results from The POLITICO Poll show that half of Americans, including nearly a quarter of Trump’s 2024 voters, still say the president’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive. That’s virtually unchanged from polling numbers in January and April, amid mounting political outrage over federal agents killing two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Non-MAGA Trump voters are twice as likely as self-identified MAGA voters to say the president’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive — 31 percent compared with 15 percent, according to the new poll, which was conducted Aug. 8 to Aug. 12.
The persistence of that negative voter sentiment underscores a vulnerability for Republicans heading into November, as the party grapples with its message and policy approach on an issue the GOP once dominated. Immigration was a reliable winner for Republicans, with the party rallying voters around border security and public safety. Now, they’re struggling not only to convince persuadable voters, but also hold together their own coalition as it splinters over deportations.
“Voters really did want border security, but they did not want to see abuelita taken away because she’s been here for 40 years but without documentation,” said Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson.
The poll, conducted by London-based polling firm Public First, found a notable share of Americans believe the administration has shifted how it is conducting deportations following the fatal shootings, but that has not been enough to reverse Americans’ views of the administration’s deportation strategy.
A 56 percent majority of Americans say there has been at least a small shift in the way the Trump administration has been conducting its deportation campaign. But a plurality of those respondents, 44 percent, say the shifts have made no difference in how much they trust the administration on immigration. Thirty percent say the shifts make them less willing to trust the administration on immigration.
Among the 71 percent of Trump voters who said they’ve observed at least a small shift from the administration, nearly half, 48 percent, say those shifts make “no difference” in how much they trust the administration on immigration. Nineteen percent said the shifts make them less likely to trust the administration, while 29 percent said they’d be more likely.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster in Washington, said that even with the lower-profile approach, the administration’s goal of increasing arrest and deportation numbers remains. That conflicts with what many voters broadly support: targeting immigrants in the country illegally who have committed crimes.
The lack of a change in voter sentiment is “not that surprising at all,” Ayres said. “It’s a lot easier just to go into an airport and find somebody who had overstayed a visa, had applied for an extension … and throw them into handcuffs and put them in a detention center. That’s the easy way to get the numbers up, and a great way to thoroughly antagonize public opinion.”
Another Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape, said Trump “ran on border security, and he’s following through.”
“But the visuals of wins are unfortunately overshadowed by the visuals of chaos,” the strategist said. “There’s no question that the wall to wall coverage of the chaos that follows ICE makes voters squeamish.”
The White House pointed to polling from this spring that showed that 80 percent of Americans support deporting unauthorized immigrants who have committed crimes, as well as a Department of Homeland Security press release that highlighted arrests of immigrants who had been accused of sexual assault of a child, forcible sexual abuse and drug posession.
“Americans sent President Trump back to the White House with a clear mandate to deport criminal illegal aliens. Every single day the Trump Administration is delivering on his promise to the American people to remove murderers, pedophiles, rapists, and gang members from American communities,” said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. “Americans are grateful to the President for removing these criminals from their neighborhoods and for Making America Safe Again.”
The GOP’s stronghold on immigration as a campaign issue eroded soon after the president’s return to the White House. Soon, robust enforcement efforts led to viral images of arrests inside courthouses, at airports and on neighborhood streets. The backlash brewed for months, and peaked this year amid the killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good in Minnesota.
The White House moved quickly to contain the political fallout, sidelining then-Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and deploying border czar Tom Homan to ease tensions. The administration has since sought to avoid controversy on immigration ahead of the midterms, emphasized criminal arrests and changed leadership at the Department of Homeland Security. Since Markwayne Mullin took the reins in March, he has reversed contentious policies, including a plan to turn massive warehouses into detention facilities.
Still, some Republicans are particularly worried that the hardline immigration stance was hurting the party with key voting blocs, such as young voters, moderate Republicans and Latino voters. The president won 46 percent of the Latino vote in 2024, the highest share of any GOP presidential candidate in modern history, but these voters have grown increasingly concerned with Trump’s deportations policy.
Democrats, meanwhile, are highlighting the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics on the trail, betting that more voters are repulsed than grateful for the increased presence of ICE and other federal agents in their communities. Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who won the Democratic primary for Senate last week, used her victory speech to rail against her opponent, GOP nominee Michele Tafoya.
“Michele Tafoya was all in with Trump when ICE was terrorizing our neighbors,” she said.
Republicans, for their part, are fractured over the path forward, as immigration hawks battle with wary moderates who are pushing for a targeted focus on criminals.
Not only are non-MAGA voters more likely than MAGA voters to say Trump’s mass deportations campaign is too aggressive, there’s also a stark divide in how each faction supports the goals and implementation of his immigration agenda, The Blue Light News Poll found. Nearly two-thirds of MAGA Trump voters — 64 percent — say they support both the goals and implementation of his deportations campaign, compared to just 35 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters.
The president’s MAGA supporters and immigration hardliners have argued that the administration is going soft on the president’s mass deportation vow, potentially turning off the far right base at a time when the party can’t risk a lull in turnout.
The split flared up last month when Mullin temporarily paused some ICE vehicle stops — a tactic the agency was using to increase arrest statistics — after two ICE-involved shootings during vehicle stops in Texas and Maine. While some Republicans welcomed Mullin’s response, the president’s MAGA supporters portrayed it as weak.
“We are being betrayed in real time,” conservative commentator Tomi Lahren said on X at the time. “If you want Trump voters to stay home in November, keep this up Markwayne and co.”
The president, after online pushback, reversed the DHS order.
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Million-dollar fundraising advantages and even endorsements from President Donald Trump did little to sway Florida voters Tuesday as they rattled the state’s parties by opposing candidates backed by the establishment.
Newly minted Democratic socialist Angie Nixon scored a massive upset — and notched a win for progressives — by beating retired Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, who had a huge fundraising edge. And, in another major development, two candidates endorsed by Trump, scandal-plagued Rep. Cory Mills and former administration official Catalina Lauf, lost their bids for Congress.
Taken together, the results show Democratic and Republican voters in solidly red Florida are hungry for change amid dissatisfaction with the economy, an ongoing war in Iran and restlessness over the status quo.
“People are frustrated, frankly, with both parties,” said Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, who is a former legislator and chair of the Republican Party of Florida. “They’re frustrated with people not delivering. … They want people to deliver for Floridians. They want people to deliver for Americans.”
National Democrats scrutinized states throughout the country during the primary season, looking for every opportunity they could find to pick up seats and flip the upper chamber come November. The one thing they may not have been betting on: A progressive who sorely lagged in fundraising scoring an upset in Florida. But that’s just what they got with Nixon’s win.
A state lawmaker and Jacksonville community organizer who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America — but notably did not have DSA’s endorsement — Nixon ended up handily winning with more than 55 percent of the vote, surprising the state as she’s now positioned to campaign against GOP Sen. Ashley Moody, the former state attorney general appointed to the Senate by Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
On Tuesday night, Nixon told supporters who gathered to hear her victory speech in Jacksonville that her win sent “shockwaves” to the Washington establishment.
“And they better get ready,” Nixon said. “When we realize that we are each other, we are not each other’s enemies, and that we are all struggling.”
In the state Legislature, Nixon was an adversary of DeSantis and his fellow Republicans, as she notably opposed Florida’s rare mid-decade redistricting push by railing on the newly drawn maps on the House floor in a pink jumpsuit and shouting through a pink megaphone. Nixon campaigned on progressive policies like free childcare and freezing rent nationally, helping her score support from national progressives like Democratic Reps. Maxwell Frost of Florida, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Vindman had a prominent profile as a National Security Council whistleblower who testified in Trump’s first impeachment trial and secured a massive fundraising advantage surpassing $20 million largely from small-dollar donors. Nixon, meanwhile, didn’t scratch $1 million. But being outgunned proved not to be a factor for Nixon.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a progressive Democrat from Orlando, said Nixon’s campaign centered around the needs of the working class, from affordability to health care. Those concerns generated enough momentum for Nixon’s campaign to overcome the millions of dollars spent by Vindman.
“It really just speaks to saying that money doesn’t determine everything,” Eskamani said. “They’re tired of health care not being affordable and one job not being enough.”
Some Florida Republicans celebrated Nixon’s victory, believing a progressive will be easier for the GOP to overcome in November.
“It was a wild night in Florida politics,” GOP Rep. Randy Fine said at the victory party for Rep. Byron Donalds after he won his own crowded primary. “I mean, the Nixon win is the greatest gift ever. She’s crazy and should be in jail for the stuff she pulled on the House floor.”
But Fernand Amandi, a Democratic strategist for both David Jolly, who won the Democratic primary for governor, said that Nixon’s win shows frustration with longtime GOP control in Florida.
“It tells me that Democrats are uniting behind a message that holds a Republican Party that has total control over Florida government for 30 years responsible for the cost-of-living crisis that Floridians from all walks of life are suffering through,” Amandi said. “It doesn’t matter which wing of the party — they are uniting behind the message.”
On the Republican side, Trump’s endorsement didn’t prove to be the deciding factor in two races. In Florida’s 19th District, Trump’s endorsed candidate, Lauf, a former adviser at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the president’s first term, lost to Jim Schwartzel, a media executive and owner of a conservative talk radio station, by about 7 points.
It was a crowded field, with several former congressmen, including former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn and New York Rep. Chris Collins also running.
In Florida’s 7th District, Mills fell short of his bid to hold on to his seat, even with the president’s early backing. Instead, former television anchor Ryan Elijah defeated him by about 12 percentage points.
Under investigation by the House and shunned by some of his GOP colleagues in Congress, pressure has been building on Mills for weeks and only intensified recently as Republicans like DeSantis and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna came out against him. Mills has remained adamant that he has done nothing wrong amid a long line of incidents — including a restraining order placed on him at the request of a former girlfriend — and had defied calls from other Republicans to step down from his central Florida congressional seat.
Mills hoped Trump’s endorsement would put him over the line with voters, but it wasn’t enough. Elijah, who outraised Mills and other GOP contenders, tried to make the case during the campaign that a Mills win would make the seat an easier target for Democrats.
During his victory speech Tuesday night, Elijah highlighted the support he got from rank-and-file House Republicans, particularly Rep. Mike Haridopolos, with whom he said he has had a long relationship. And he noted the risk those GOP members took in balking against a Trump-endorsed candidate.
“To have those leaders jump on board with us a couple weeks ago, against an incumbent and against a presidential endorsement, and they did that anyway.” Elijah said. “That is courage right there, and I applaud them for that.”
President Donald Trump just suffered another endorsement loss, this time in deep-red Wyoming.
Republican state Sen. Eric Barlow defeated Trump-backed Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder in the gubernatorial primary on Tuesday.
It’s another blow to Trump’s once-stellar primary endorsement record, which has shown vulnerabilities in recent weeks. Former MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell lost his primary for governor in Minnesota last week, as did a Trump-endorsed Michigan congressional candidate who fell to an opponent who had already dropped out. Two other Trump-backed candidates fell in Florida Tuesday: Rep. Cory Mills and House candidate Catalina Lauf.
Trump’s endorsement power has seemed to particularly wane in governor’s races. Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, Iowa Rep. Randy Feenstra and South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette all fell in their primaries this year despite the president’s support.
Barlow, a fourth generation Wyomingite rancher, centered his campaign on protecting public lands, funding public schools and expanding rural health care access. Degenfelder leaned heavily on her Trump endorsement, and her campaign as well as outside groups supporting her ran repeated attack ads casting Barlow as too liberal to lead the state.
But Barlow was able to overcome those attacks and Trump’s endorsement on Tuesday.
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