JULY 15, 2026
Maine Democrats debate and compete to replace Graham Platner as Senate nominee against Susan Collins
Graham Platner, who won Maine's Democratic Senate primary in early June with nearly three-quarters of the vote, dropped out of the race after a woman alleged he had sexually assaulted her; Platner has denied the allegation. Maine Democrats will select a replacement nominee at a July 25 convention in Bangor, where 601 delegates will vote, with delegate selection taking place across all 16 counties this weekend. The leading candidates to replace Platner are former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and former public health official Nirav Shah, all of whom previously ran in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.
The three principal candidates vying for the Democratic nomination each entered the race as former gubernatorial contenders. Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and former Maine Senate President, ran with Platner on the campaign trail and holds endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders, progressive group Our Revolution, Rep. Ro Khanna, and the Maine AFL-CIO, which cited his support for workers' issues and his record of winning rural and working-class voters. Shenna Bellows, Maine's Secretary of State, entered the race after Platner withdrew and has drawn support from a number of state House members who previously backed Platner. Nirav Shah, who finished first in the gubernatorial primary by raw vote total before losing under ranked choice voting, served as director of the Maine CDC from 2019 to 2023 and later as principal deputy director of the federal CDC before departing after President Trump took office; Shah's campaign has been recruiting former Platner organizers behind the scenes, according to two people familiar with the strategy, and he has publicly invited Platner supporters to join him.
A debate among the candidates was scheduled for Thursday. The compressed timeline — just 11 days between Platner's withdrawal and the July 25 convention — has added urgency to organizing efforts. A letter circulated by former Platner campaign volunteers, which gathered hundreds of signatures by Tuesday, called on the eventual nominee to publicly adopt a list of progressive commitments including positions on health care, housing, and foreign policy. Both Jackson and Bellows signed the letter. Jackson and Bellows also joined other candidates in calling for ICE to be removed from Maine following the shooting of a 26-year-old man in Biddeford by ICE agents on Monday, an event that candidates and Democratic state officials described as a reminder of the stakes of the Senate race.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would not make an endorsement before the convention. "I'm staying out of Maine," Schumer told Politico. Two sources close to Schumer said he was concerned any endorsement would backfire, with one Democratic strategist quoted as saying, "Anyone he wants would be toxic." Sen. Dick Durbin echoed Schumer's reasoning. Schumer's restraint marks a departure from his practice of intervening in contested primaries; the Washington Examiner noted that he had backed Gov. Janet Mills in the earlier gubernatorial primary, where she trailed Platner by roughly 40 points before dropping out.