Well, I did not expect to get two political articles out in two days after a relatively long drought for them, but that's the way the political news crumbles sometimes. Without further adieu, let's discuss the horrifying allegations faced by Graham Platner, the (present) Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine.
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| Graham Platner (D-ME) |
For those unaware, Graham Platner, who has faced multiple scandals involving a Nazi tattoo, racist & sexist Reddit comments, physical abuse, and extramarital affairs, added to that list with an allegation of rape from Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old woman who dated Platner on-and-off for two years. Racicot, a registered Democrat, said that she was initially reluctant to come forward because she agreed with Platner's politics, but said "I'm just here to tell my story to give a clearer picture of who he is and the type of past he has."
Platner initially vehemently denied the allegations & refused to get out of the race, but that tenor had softened in a Twitter video he posted, where he said he would step back for a few days and consider what to do next (while still denying the allegations). The deadline to drop out and be replaced (without any issue) by the state party is next Monday, and I'll be honest-Platner will be forced out sometime before then, I suspect within the next 48 hours. Already an avalanche of US Senators and Senate candidates have issued statements asking for him to step aisde, and combined with flagging poll numbers & potentially soft fundraising numbers (he hadn't yet released his Q2 numbers, always a warning sign this far into the month), he will step aside, likely saying he's doing so "to not be a distraction," but nonetheless disappearing into political anonymity. Either way-a week from now Graham Platner will not be the Democratic nominee for the US Senate.
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| Senate President Troy Jackson (D-ME) |
Under the pretty clear assumption that Platner will drop out of the race before the Monday deadline, Democrats will get to pick a replacement. While Gov. Janet Mills would probably be the frontrunner for this if she hadn't run, she did run and turned in an underwhelming performance (and she also seems pretty much done with politics), so I doubt she's the candidate. The same seems to be the case for Rep. Jared Golden, who is retiring at the end of this term, but otherwise would be our best candidate and could easily beat Collins.
Therefore, it's likely to be someone with a less obvious national profile. The far left, including Hasan Piker, are making the argument that Platner represented their ideals and while he should go, they should get the opportunity to replace him with someone from their line (former Senate President Troy Jackson). But Jackson has a relatively robust connection with Platner (there's literally video of Platner saying that he's "proud to share a stage with him") which Collins would pretty quickly weaponize against him, and also (on a personal level) I'm feeling pretty heartily burned by the Sanders/Khanna wing of the party (more on that in a second) so I honestly hope that they pick someone other than Jackson, though online sentiment (and for what it's worth, betting markets) seem to think he's the frontrunner.
Personally, I think you could make an argument that they could go with the second place finisher in the Maine gubernatorial race, which would be Dr. Nirav Shah, but he also is a first-time candidate and (again) the party should feel a bit burned there. It honestly feels like the Democrats, given the charges against Platner, might pick a woman as his replacement (this was a big consideration when Al Franken resigned, and ultimately ended up being a good decision), though there are men who aren't first-timers and might be in the mix (Attorney General Aaron Frey and State House Speaker Ryan Fecteau being the top ones). State House Speaker Sara Gideon, Rep. Chellie Pingree, or Secretary of State Shenna Bellows would all work...but they've all lost to Collins before, even though I think they'd all three go in potentially as favorites if they ran this time. Ultimately this in some ways enters VP speculation (i.e. it's mostly a guessing game where no one knows how it turns out), but I'm going to throw in one additional name I'd be looking at if I was in the contest: current Senate President (and Jackson's successor to that office) Mattie Daughtry, who is young (she's 39), a woman, a longtime & respected state leader, and because she hasn't run statewide doesn't have any of the "far left vs. establishment" baggage many other candidates have.
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| Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) |
There was mixed opinion on whether or not Susan Collins would be happy or sad about this change, and I am going on record as saying that Collins was probably miserable when this leaked yesterday. A good comparison is the 2012 race where Republicans begged Todd Akin privately to get out of the race (according to most reports State Treasurer Sarah Steelman was ready to take over for him as a replacement), but Claire McCaskill stayed silent and only tacitly spoke against him because she knew she'd lose to Steelman. Collins is in the same boat-she clearly wanted Platner as her opponent, likely was aware of this story (or the rumors about it), and may well have had more ammunition about Platner in her research bag.
Now Collins will have to run against a different candidate, admittedly one who is less vetted & will start out with a cash disadvantage...but that will pretty quickly evaporate. There's no evidence this close to the election that voters punish congressional replacement candidates (this is not a Biden/Harris situation), and as long as they don't pick someone with a similar scandal or who has strong ties to Platner, he likely will be a political asterisk by November. Instead, Collins will have to run the kind of campaign she would've had to run in 2018-where the only option to send a message to Trump is to vote her out, and she has to convince Democratic voters why they should keep her against a candidate they'll like. I have long-maintained that 2018 might be the only election cycle since she was first elected that Collins would've lost. 2026 could well become that case, and without Platner in the race, she becomes the mild underdog in my estimation.
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| Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at a campaign rally with Jackson (left) and Platner |
I've resisted so far in this article saying "I told you so" but I'm going to say it now less to be "that guy" and more because I think it needs to be underlined. Platner, for starters, was always a bit of a silly choice for the US Senate. He had no political background, had never held (or even run) for political office, and he was hardly a compelling speaker if you compare him to, say, Jon Ossoff or Beto O'Rourke. His aesthetic and personal history became a weird sort of Rorschach test for people desperate to not run yet another long-tenured political officeholder against Collins.
But the scandals were obvious, and plentiful, and the fact that so many Democrats were willing to take the risks and ignore the giant red flags of a Nazi tattoo, assault allegations, and years of casual online racism & misogyny should reflect badly on them. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Martin Heinrich, Ro Khanna, David Hogg, and the hosts of Pod Saves America should be ashamed of themselves. They will claim "no one could've seen this coming" but it was very, very obvious in the same way it's always obvious Trump will have more scandals, and either they are aggressively stupid (which they aren't...well, most of them aren't) or they genuinely don't have strong beliefs beyond winning power and influence. They were willing to nominate a Nazi-tattooed man who had had rape allegation rumors surrounding him for months for the most consequential Senate race in the country, just because it might endear them to his far-left supporters. I'm sorry, but that is exactly what people like Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, & Ted Cruz attempted to do in 2016 in glomming onto Trump, and they deserve to be uttered in that same breath after their behavior here.
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| Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI) |
The DSA/Democratic Tea Party train has already left the station a bit in New York and Colorado, but honestly-so far that hasn't really caused an issue like Maine, where a swing state (and in this case, a flip) was made vulnerable by nominating a candidate that was politically toxic. It's also not clear (to me) how much legs this story has, or whether or not people will associate Platner's candidacy with the people who carried water for him (i.e. the Bernie's and the Ro Khanna's) or if this will totally be put into the confines of the scandal.
But I am definitely watching Michigan right now. Both for the US Senate and for the 7th district, we have a duplicate of this race-a more established Democratic woman, being portrayed as the favorite of the establishment, facing off against someone backed by the Sanders/Khanna wing of the party. In both cases, if the party doesn't back Haley Stevens & Bridget Brink (and instead backs Abdul El-Sayed & William Lawrence), they're not necessarily (hopefully) going to have a scandal of this magnitude, but they are going to be coming into the general with a coalition that we were seeing in the past few days was falling apart in Maine post the the primary glow even without the recent Platner news, and could potentially take winnable races off of the map.
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