Friday, July 10, 2026

Graham Platner's exit should deeply concern Susan Collins

Graham Platner is officially now out as the Democratic nominee in Maine. The allegation-plagued oysterman ended his campaign on Wednesday evening with a defiant video where he said he would file papers to withdraw his name from the ballot and then on Friday did just that.

Now begins the replacement process. Democrats have until July 27 to replace Platner on the ballot. Other than that, according to the Maine secretary of state’s website, the criteria is fairly open, saying only that the vacancy be filled by a “qualified person.”

Former Maine Senate president Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former Maine Center for Disease Control director Nirav Shah and Maine Beer Company co-founder Dan Kleban have all now jumped into the race.

The reasons are obvious: winning back the Senate for Democrats is nearly impossible if Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins wins reelection. There’s also the fact that Platner mobilized an army of supporters who will have a big say in this election.

All of this feels very similar to two years ago when Democrats removed Joe Biden as their nominee for president and replaced him with Vice President Kamala Harris. That didn’t go the way they hoped, but it stemmed the bleeding from what would have been a massacre.

Still, Platner’s troubled campaign may not have been in vain since it showed that taking on Collins is doable. Before Politico dropped its report that Platner had allegedly sexually assaulted an ex-girlfriend, which he vehemently denied, polling showed Platner running only a few points behind Collins.

As The Independent reported last year, after Collins’ stunning win in 2020, by 8 points despite Joe Biden winning Maine by 9 points, Democrats had trouble fielding a credible challenger to the five-term incumbent.

Now, ironically, many of the Democrats who were too afraid to run against Collins are jumping back in. Jackson, Bellows and Shah all opted to run for governor and lost last month while Kleban briefly ran for Senate before he dropped out to endorse Gov. Janet Mills, the favorite of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

If anything, by removing Platner from the picture, the race now becomes more about Collins. In 2020, some Mainers likely elected her as a check on Biden. Now, they do not see her as a check on Trump.

“This is no longer going to be about Graham Platner, it’s back to being a referendum on Susan Collins,” one national Democratic strategist told The Independent.

Read more here. 

By Eric Garcia

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