Good evening from outside Graham Platner’s home in the wooded, seaside hills of Sullivan, Maine.
The progressive Democratic nominee for Senate and some of his top advisers have been holed up inside his light-blue Greek Revival farmhouse since his campaign was rocked two days ago by a report that a woman had accused him of rape.
Platner, an oysterman who won the nomination last month, has said he is taking time to “reflect” on his path forward. Top Democrats in Washington and all of Platner’s most important progressive allies have urged him to end his campaign, and it is widely expected that he will do so — but he is hanging on for now.
He has until Monday to drop out under state law, and the state party would have until July 27 to find a replacement.
Here’s what we know about the uproar in the Democratic Party in its bid to unseat Senator Susan Collins, a vulnerable Republican, in one of the country’s most important Senate battlegrounds:
Why hasn’t Platner dropped out yet?
Platner told his campaign team in a private call on Monday that he hoped to use his leverage as the existing nominee to influence who might replace him.
The Maine Democratic Party has bristled at what it says has been a pressure campaign to influence the process.
“We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our U.S. Senate nominee,” Devon Murphy-Anderson, the party’s executive director, said yesterday in a video statement.
Charles Dingman, the state party chair, said this afternoon that he had not received any further outreach from the Platner team today. He said his party was operating in overdrive.
“We are moving very, very fast now,” Dingman, who raced back to Maine on Tuesday from vacation, told me. The party is holding a meeting about the process with committee members this evening.
What are top Democrats saying?
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, the chair of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, issued a statement late Monday saying Platner needed to leave the race “immediately.”
A wide array of other Democratic senators and House members have called on Platner to withdraw.
What about Susan Collins and Republicans?
After the latest allegation, Collins, a centrist, said in a statement that she found the allegations “appalling” but that “it is not up to me to choose the Democratic nominee.”
She has said nothing publicly since and has no public events scheduled for the rest of the week, her spokeswoman, Blake Kernen, said.
Senate Republicans’ campaign arm has issued a string of statements trying to tie Democratic Senate candidates in other states to Platner.
What are potential replacement candidates doing?
A number of Democrats have expressed interest in replacing Platner on the ballot.
They include Nirav Shah, a former public health official; Troy Jackson, a former president of the Maine Senate favored by some progressives; Shenna Bellows, the Maine secretary of state; Jordan Wood, a former congressional staff member; and Dan Kleban, a founder of a brewery.
They’ve been issuing statements, talking to potential supporters and sizing up their chances. Wood, who came up short in a House primary last month, told me he cut a vacation in North and South Dakota short and was flying back to Maine today.
Shah, Jackson and Bellows all lost in the Democratic primary for governor last month.
Today, Jackson was endorsed by Representative Ro Khanna, a California progressive who had been one of Platner’s most vocal backers.
What does this chaos mean for the fight for Senate control?
Democrats have expressed concern that their party may be squandering its chances in Maine, one of a handful of states considered key to Democrats’ effort to win back the Senate. (Others include Alaska, Iowa, Texas and Ohio — places where, unlike traditionally blue Maine, President Trump won handily in 2024.)
Yasmin Radjy, the executive director of the progressive group Swing Left, said her group had removed Maine from the list of states it was targeting in the Senate battle because it did not believe Democrats could win the state right now. She says the group did not take the decision lightly.
“Defeating Susan Collins is, to state the obvious, essential for winning a Democratic Senate majority,” she texted me.
The group might reconsider the decision, she said, if Maine Democrats found a credible challenger to Collins.
“It’s such a mess,” Barbara Linton, 70, a Democrat who lives in Sullivan, told me. “They will replace him with somebody who has more experience. But they’re not going to replace him with someone who can beat Susan Collins.”
Linton still has a Platner sign in her yard, and says she thinks Platner would have been able to beat Collins before the latest allegation, citing his charisma.
“Under different circumstances,” she said, she probably wouldn’t have supported Platner, whose campaign faced a series of unsettling disclosures about his personal life. She was “blinded,” she said, by her desire for Democrats to win the Senate.
Now she says she can’t see a Democrat flipping the seat.
“It will not be the end of the world — she is an extremely good senator,” she said of Collins, sounding resigned. “But she is a Republican.”
quote of the day
“I don’t think we’re going to have that problem.”
That was Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, suggesting to my colleagues Annie Karni and Carl Hulse that he was not concerned about the recent wave of progressive primary victories across the country. Some of these candidates have refused to support Jeffries for House speaker next year.
Read more about the predictions and frustrations Jeffries shared.
A moderate goes on the attack at a Michigan Senate debate
The Democratic primary race for Senate in Michigan, which is holding one of this year’s top contests for the chamber, is getting increasingly combative.
At their first one-on-one debate since a third candidate dropped out, Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate, wasted no time in attacking her progressive opponent, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who has led in most polls.
She accused him of being too focused on publicity: “Unlike my opponent,” she said, “I’m not running at the first mic or camera I see.” In turn, Dr. El-Sayed called her a tool of corporate interests and of the pro-Israel lobby.
My colleague Reid Epstein was there. Here’s what else he saw.
2028 watch
Rahm Emanuel, in Tel Aviv, tries to show Israel tough love
Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who is exploring a 2028 presidential run, warned in a speech in Tel Aviv today that unconditional U.S. support of Israel should end, and demanded that Israel make major changes.
At a time when Israel is hemorrhaging support in the U.S., and especially in the Democratic Party, Emanuel is trying to chart a course between the anti-Israel left and the pro-Israel right, my colleague David Halbfinger writes.
ONE LAST THING
Mitch McConnell’s colleagues say they spoke to him
Speculation about the condition of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has mounted since his hospitalization nearly a month ago. His office has provided only scant details.
But on Tuesday, the top two Senate Republicans, John Thune of South Dakota and John Barrasso of Wyoming, said McConnell had been well enough recently to speak on the phone. Thune, the majority leader, recounted a “lengthy and substantive conversation.” Barrasso said his roughly 20-minute chat with McConnell touched upon “the Graham Platner scandal and the recent Supreme Court ruling on coordinated spending limits.”
Taylor Robinson contributed reporting.
