Maine Democrats’ first debate laid bare their difficulty in replacing Graham Platner

By Eric Bradner, CNN

(CNN) — As Maine Democrats prepare to replace Graham Platner as their Senate nominee, eight candidates pitched themselves as best prepared to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins over two hours of debates Thursday night.

The first hour featured four candidates who were on the primary ballot in different races this year. All lost — but all earned at least 20% of the vote in their contests.

Former public health official Nirav Shah pointed to his performance in the gubernatorial primary (he earned the most first-place votes, but finished second once ranked-choice votes were tabulated). Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson touted his state-level accomplishments. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows highlighted her attempt to disqualify President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot. Former Capitol Hill staffer Jordan Wood said he’d be best able to separate himself politically from Platner.

The second hour was an undercard of sorts, with four lesser-known candidates looking to break through in the abbreviated race. Among them was Dan Kleban, the Maine Beer Company founder who last year entered the Senate race, but ended his campaign after Democratic Gov. Janet Mills jumped in with the party establishment’s support. Mills would ultimately suspend her campaign in April as she trailed Platner in the polls.

“I think people are sick and tired of career politicians,” Kleban said as he sought to vault into the top tier of Democrats in the race.

The debate laid bare the reality of how difficult replacing Platner and mounting a serious challenge against Collins will be. None of the candidates in Thursday night’s debate could replicate the political skills that allowed Platner to emerge as a viral sensation, elbow a two-term governor out of the race and poll neck-and-neck with Collins before he ended his campaign after a woman accused him of rape – allegations he has denied. Shah’s delivery was one-note and Bellows’ was halting. Wood often turned to his notes. Jackson frequently cleared his throat and changed directions mid-sentence.

It all comes ahead of a July 25 convention at which Maine Democrats will select Platner’s replacement on the ballot. The candidates are making their cases to an extremely small audience: The nominee will be chosen at a convention of 601 delegates, including 101 members of the Democratic State Committee and 500 chosen from the state’s 16 counties in local meetings this weekend.

Here are takeaways from the Maine Senate debate night:

Platner’s shadow

A political certainty in the lead-up to November is that Republicans will seek to tie the Democratic Senate nominee to Platner. Those vying for the nomination Thursday night did little to discourage that comparison as they touted their progressive bona fides.

Wood noted that, as he campaigned for the Senate nomination last fall before switching to a House bid, he’d been quick to call for Platner to drop out of the race amid earlier controversies. But none of the major candidates recounted the details of the allegations he faced, and all eagerly embraced some of Platner’s political positions when asked by the moderators what they would take forward from his campaign.

Jackson said that like Platner, he supports Medicare for All. Shah said that he also supports abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Wood said Platner was right to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, and said that “it is so important in these moments to draw those moral lines.” And Bellows said Platner was right to say that “‘the democracy we thought we had has been deeply corrupted.”

Furor over ICE shooting

Also looming over Thursday night’s debate: the fatal shooting of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero by an ICE officer in Biddeford on Monday.

Shah raised it in his opening statement, lambasting the Trump administration: “I’m angry that there’s a 3-year-old girl that’s never going to see her father again,” he said.

But all four took shots at the agency, saying it should be abolished or – in Bellows’ case – that she wanted ICE out of Maine and remembered the United States before the agency’s 2003 creation.

“I remember a day when the thugs weren’t in the government, and they didn’t have arms,” Bellows said.

Jackson said he supports law enforcement but that ICE “is not law enforcement.”

“It’s a rogue agency that goes around doing things that they’re being told to on high,” he argued. “They give us nothing in this country but heartache and racism.”

Wood said ICE agents should be banned from wearing masks, and should be required to display identification and wear body cameras.

Shah said he thinks about his immigrant mother, who didn’t speak English when she first came to the country, and “how terrified she would have been had she known the president’s goons were patrolling the streets and might snatch her up.”

“The rot has gone to the core, and that’s why we must abolish it,” Shah said.

Debating Collins, not each other

Thursday night’s debate did very little to draw out differences among the candidates — all of whom trained their criticism toward Collins, the five-term Republican incumbent, and Trump, rather than other candidates in the Democratic race.

That could be in part because the party’s July 25 convention could require several rounds of voting — with candidates’ cross-endorsements and alliances playing a pivotal role in the ultimate outcome.

Shah had the most polished delivery, and the most unique material. He chided Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as “obsessed with testosterone levels of troops,” rather than focused on the challenges of drones and artificial intelligence, and said he should be booted from Trump’s Cabinet.

Jackson sought to frame his campaign in working-class terms, saying he was running “so that everyday people get a government that they deserve.”

But at no point did the top candidates clash over policy differences or challenge each other’s claims of electability or preparedness for what’s likely be one of the nation’s hardest-fought Senate races this fall.

Candidates will have another chance to make their cases on July 23, when CNN will host a debate in partnership with the Bangor Daily News.

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