The frenzied sprint among Maine Democrats hoping to replace Graham Platner

By Patrick Svitek, CNN

(CNN) — County party chairs inundated with calls. An endless stream of Google sign-up forms and spreadsheets. And a disgraced former nominee looming over it all, haunting the party’s hopes of starting anew.

The snap Democratic election to replace Graham Platner and face Republican Sen. Susan Collins this fall is off to a hectic and dramatic start.

The implosion of Platner’s campaign after he was accused of rape – an allegation he denies – left Maine Democrats scrambling to create a highly unorthodox process that reflects the high stakes for the battle to win control of the Senate.

On July 25, just 15 days after Platner formally dropped out, 601 delegates will meet in Bangor, the state capital, to vote on a new nominee. Most of the delegates – 500 – will be picked this weekend at county meetings across Maine. The other 101 delegates will automatically come from Maine’s Democratic State Committee, and they are already being heavily courted.

At least eight candidates are rushing to collect enough signatures to qualify for the convention and assemble slates of delegates to vote for them.

“We are in a perilous situation, and there is no perfect way to deal with an unprecedented situation like this,” one of the candidates, Jordan Wood, told reporters this week.

Platner’s tarnished legacy looms large, with some of his supporters looking for a replacement nominee to continue the working-class progressive movement that he tried to build.

Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, who launched his Senate campaign with the support of over 50 current and former elected officials, appears to be making the most explicit appeal along those lines.

“You poured your hearts, your time and your energy into building this movement alongside another candidate in Maine, and I know that there’s real pain, anger and disappointment, and I’m not going to try and minimize that,” Jackson said Monday on a call with members of the national progressive group Our Revolution. “But look, this movement has always been bigger than one person.”

Candidates face a 5 p.m. Wednesday deadline to declare their intent to run, with the first scheduled debate on Thursday. By the end of Monday, candidates will need to submit 500 signatures to qualify for the ballot, including 50 signatures from at least eight separate counties.

On Tuesday night, the Maine Democratic Party said it had already received more than 5,500 submissions from Democrats who either want to be delegates or attend the county meetings to pick delegates.

It is a process with a far smaller electorate than a traditional primary, requiring an intense focus on organizing and interpersonal relationships. At least some campaigns may have reached out to, if not spoken to, all 601 delegates by the time they arrive in Bangor.

Maine Democrats have little room for error. July 27 — two days after the convention — is the last day under state law on which they can submit the name of the replacement nominee for inclusion on the ballot.

“I think that all of us are working hard to make this process transparent, inclusive and as timely as possible,” Paige Zeigler, chair of the Waldo County Democrats, said in an email that partly addressed out-of-state political observers: “We Mainers will show the way because ‘as Maine go, so goes the nation.’ Now follow us and elect some damn good leaders this November.”

How the campaigns are running

Previous statewide candidates, with built-in political networks, could have an advantage.

Nirav Shah’s campaign for governor, which got the most first-round votes in the June 9 Democratic primary before losing to Hannah Pingree, was still winding down when Platner ended his candidacy. Shah’s campaign staff were preparing to have their final meeting and discussing ideas for keeping supporters engaged in Maine, such as hosting community service events.

When it became clear the Senate nomination would be up for grabs, they quickly pivoted and held a call on Friday evening with over 100 volunteers, dozens of whom spent the next couple of days printing petitions and gathering signatures. The campaign announced Sunday night it had hit the signature threshold.

“Our team basically never stood down,” said Kayla vanWieringen, Shah’s campaign manager. “Everyone just completely mobilized.”

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, another former gubernatorial candidate now seeking the Senate nomination, has been reaching out to “super volunteers” and “county captains” from her last campaign for help with collecting signatures and recruiting delegates. They include supporters who hosted dozens of house parties for her earlier this year.

Some campaigns have hired new staff but acknowledge that initial efforts in the frenzied race have been largely carried out by volunteers.

A person familiar with Jackson’s operation, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss strategy, described an “all-out blitz” reaching out to potential delegates. “It’s just hours on the phone, frankly,” the person said.

Publicly, campaigns have been quizzing supporters on whether they plan to attend their county meeting this weekend, and if so, whether they plan to run to be delegates themselves or support that campaign’s delegate candidates. Ideally, a campaign could emerge from the county meetings with a known baseline of support for the convention.

“The goal is to lock in as many delegates you can this weekend so that you feel good heading into the nominating convention in Bangor,” the person familiar with Jackson’s operation said.

Even then, delegates are not legally bound to support a particular candidate, and their loyalties could shift from the county meetings to the convention, where there will be multiple rounds of voting until a candidate wins a majority.

“Nothing is set in stone,” said one person involved in the race.

Sure enough, the race kicked off this week with an illustration of how external events could quickly upend campaigns. After a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a man in Biddeford on Monday, Jackson attended an “emergency” rally in the coastal town and Shah held a news conference Tuesday to criticize Collins’ record of voting to fund ICE.

Campaigns are weighing how much to balance in-person events with private outreach to delegates, and they acknowledge traditional campaign tools such as TV ads are inefficient with such a small pool of voters. Even more targeted methods — such as digital ads or text messaging — may have to wait until the full list of delegates is available next week.

The Platner factor

Platner sought to shape the race to replace him as he prepared to exit it. State Rep. Valli Geiger, a prominent Platner supporter, has said she was among “several” potential candidates Platner contacted. She announced Monday she would not run, instead backing Bellows.

Even if state and national progressives are done with Platner, it appears a sizable faction in Maine wants to see him replaced by a candidate with a similar vision.

Jackson boasted Tuesday that he had signed a petition supporting a Platner-like platform of universal healthcare rights, taxing billionaires and ending so-called “forever wars.”

Jackson was arguably the closest to Platner, campaigning alongside him multiple times. He called on Platner to drop out after the rape allegation, and in an MS NOW interview last week, Jackson said Platner “lied to me” about whether there was anything concerning in his past.

Wood is going in a different direction. He told reporters that the nominee needs to be someone who can “very quickly separate themselves” from Platner.

Wood has his own history with Platner, calling on him to drop out last year when they were both running in the Senate primary. Wood later switched to the primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District and backed Platner for Senate once Platner’s chief opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, stepped aside.

Brewery owner Dan Kleban, who briefly ran for Senate against Platner before dropping out and backing Mills, is positioning himself for the convention as a Platner-like outsider without the baggage. Like Platner, Kleban is a critic of New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and has vowed not to support him as Senate Democratic leader.

Schumer backed Mills in the primary, but his aides have promised he will not get involved in the convention.

It remains to be seen if all the national progressive figures who backed Platner will make endorsements before the convention. Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who was one of Platner’s most loyal supporters in Congress, has already backed Jackson, but Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have not made endorsements.

Sanders told CNN on Monday he did not think he would endorse a candidate ahead of the convention.

Most other outside Democrats are staying out of the primary – with two notable exceptions. Both of Illinois’ Democratic senators have spoken out against Shah over his time as the state’s public health director.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth said last week she “strongly opposes” Shah’s Senate campaign based on his record in her state. Sen. Dick Durbin, another Illinois Democrat, told CNN on Tuesday he would not support Shah if he wins the nomination.

Shah shrugged off the criticism at a Monday news conference.

“I don’t think Democrats are helped with other Democrats criticizing Democrats,” said Shah, who left Illinois in 2019 for a similar public health role in Maine. “I’m confident (Mainers) know me and they’ve seen me show up for them. That’s ultimately what matters.”

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