Democrats in Maine and nationally are racing to find a new Senate nominee in the state’s crucial race after Graham Platner suspended his bid on Wednesday night in the wake of a rape allegation that prompted his most prominent backers to abandon him.
Democrats will need to act quickly: Maine state law gives the party just over two weeks to identify a replacement by July 27. On Wednesday night, the party announced that a replacement would be chosen in a nominating convention, but did not give further details.
Choosing a new candidate will be politically thorny, with moderates and progressives jockeying for influence over who is selected. Democrats will also be newly wary about vetting after their tumultuous experience with Mr. Platner. The new nominee will have to ramp up quickly and raise money fast to take on Senator Susan Collins, a Republican who has long dashed Democrats’ hopes of taking her seat.
Here are some of the potential candidates:
Troy Jackson, a progressive who served as the president of Maine’s State Senate from 2018 to 2024, is seen as aligned with Mr. Platner’s politics. Mr. Platner himself listed Mr. Jackson as his top pick for governor before the Democratic primary in June, in which Mr. Jackson came in third place. He is a logger from rural Aroostook County in northern Maine, and his father was a logger, too. By Tuesday, he had formed an exploratory committee to signal his interest in running for Senate.
A Democrat who campaigned as an outsider, Dr. Nirav Shah moved to Maine from the Midwest in 2019 to serve as Gov. Janet Mills’s health director. He led the state’s coronavirus response before becoming the principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023 and most recently working as a professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He ran for governor and led by three percentage points in the first round of the primary, but lost to the more progressive Hannah Pingree in the ranked-choice runoff. He said on Tuesday that he was considering entering the Senate race.
Shenna Bellows, elected as Maine’s secretary of state in 2020, broke into the national news in 2023 when she fought to bar Donald J. Trump from Maine’s presidential primary ballot over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. A populist in Mr. Platner’s ideological mold, she often spoke on the campaign trail about her upbringing in a working-class family in rural Hancock County. She previously served as executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Maine and as a state senator, and even won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2014, but lost in a landslide to Ms. Collins. She said on Tuesday that she would “seriously consider” entering this year’s race.
Jordan Wood, a progressive who served as chief of staff to former Representative Katie Porter of California, came in third in this year’s competitive Democratic primary for Maine’s Second Congressional District. He ran on a promise to fight corruption in Washington, citing his work as a co-founder of a nonprofit group dedicated to opposing efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He briefly entered the Democratic primary for Senate in Maine before pivoting to the congressional race. On Tuesday, Mr. Wood said that he was in “conversations” about re-entering the Senate race.
Valli Geiger is a registered nurse and a former mayor of Rockland, Maine, who was elected to the State House in 2020. At a news conference this year, she defended Mr. Platner from criticism of his past remarks about women, saying he had undergone a personal transformation and pointing to his support for rape kit legislation, The Maine Wire reported. She is in conversations about potentially joining the race, she told The Times on Wednesday morning.
Paige Loud, a 29-year-old social worker, came in last in a four-way Democratic primary to replace Representative Jared Golden in Maine’s Second Congressional District. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she ran a progressive campaign focused on universal health care, free higher education and federal housing subsidies. She filed for Maine’s Senate race with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday afternoon.
Dan Kleban, a co-founder of the Maine Beer Company, a brewery based in Freeport, briefly ran in this year’s primary for Senate before withdrawing. He pointed to his company’s progressive workplace policies and dedication to environmental philanthropy, and spoke about starting the business after he was laid off during the Great Recession. On Wednesday, Mr. Kleban told readers of his Substack newsletter, “Do What’s Write,” that he would run to replace Mr. Platner.
David Costello, a Bangor native and environmental policy consultant, won 8 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary for Senate against Mr. Platner in June. Mr. Costello was a top official in Maryland’s Department of the Environment between 2011 and 2015, and unsuccessfully challenged Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent, in 2024. On Wednesday, he announced that he would run if Mr. Platner withdrew.
Photographs by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Authors Guild Foundation, Cj Rivera/Invision, and Associated Press, Brianna Soukup/Portland Portland Press Herald, via Getty Images
Additional production by Martín González Gómez.
