The Race to Replace Graham Platner Is Heating Up
With Graham Platner bowing out of the race for U.S. Senate in Maine following allegations that he raped his former partner, the scramble to replace him is well underway—and the field of possible alternatives is starting to get considerably crowded.
Since the allegations that essentially ended Platner’s campaign came out, on Monday, the Maine Democratic Party has been constructing a plan to select another candidate. The party has landed on hosting a nominating convention, which will include 500 delegates elected proportionally by county committees and a preexisting 100-person state committee. Together, those 600 delegates will decide which of the many potential Platner replacements will face Republican Senator Susan Collins in November. They have until July 27 to officially nominate Platner’s opponent. (The convention has not yet been scheduled.) Meanwhile, Platner still has business to attend to—he has until Monday at 5 p.m. to officially withdraw his name from the ballot.
The delegates will have a wide field of candidates to choose from—so far, seven have declared their candidacy. To be eligible for nomination, candidates must garner 500 signatures, a potential barrier to entry for some of the lesser-known candidates.
Broadly speaking, the candidates who have announced their desire to run have been emphasizing their progressive and working-class credentials in an effort to hew as close as possible to the policy platform that lifted Platner to his primary victory, while distancing themselves from his scandals.
Still, there are distinctions to be made among the would-be players in this burgeoning field. Here is an early guide to who the seven candidates currently vying to take on Collins are—and where they stand on some critical policy questions.
Troy Jackson: Jackson’s name was one of the first floated after the allegations against Platner came to light. An anonymous memo circulated among some progressive strategists emphasized “his authentic working class bonafides” and said that his “anti-establishment message [contrasts] effectively against Collins as a swamp creature.” Jackson is a fifth-generation logger from Allagash and the former president of the Maine Senate.
Recently, Jackson came in third place in the state’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. In that race, he was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders. Before running for governor, he served in the Maine state Senate from 2008 to 2014 and again from 2016 to 2024.
Jackson supports Medicare for All, has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, and says he’ll never vote in favor of taxpayer-funded aid to Israel. In recent days, he has been endorsed by Representative Ro Khanna and the Maine AFL-CIO.
Nirav Shah: Shah is another 2026 gubernatorial candidate. He garnered the highest number of votes but ultimately lost the primary to Hannah Pingree due to ranked-choice voting.
Shah is a public health official who served as director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention from 2019 to 2023 and the principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2023 until 2025.
“The other thing that voters in Maine are clearly looking for is someone who is an outsider. I come to this race not having been part of the political establishment in Maine or indeed even in the United States,” Shah said in a CNN interview.
Before serving in Maine and at the CDC, Shah was director of the Illinois Department of Public Health. During his tenure, an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease killed 13 people. This has recently come back to haunt him: When Shah announced his bid to replace Platner, Senator Tammy Duckworth wrote in a post on X that she “strongly [opposes]” his run for Senate due to his handling of the outbreak.
Shah supports Medicare for All, says that ICE “in its current form” cannot continue, and has described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.
In a poll released Thursday, Shah showed the best chance of beating Collins in November, though the poll had him winning by just one point.
Shenna Bellows: Bellows came fourth in this year’s gubernatorial primary. She is currently Maine’s secretary of state. She has run for Senate before—in 2014, she went head-to-head with Susan Collins and lost in a landslide, notching only 32 percent of the vote against Collins’s 68 percent share. This was a wipeout: Collins carried every county in the state. Before entering politics, Bellows served as the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine from 2005 to 2013.
Bellows has scrubbed the policy pages of her gubernatorial campaign website, but has explained some of her policy positions in interviews during her run for governor. She proposed creating a Maine Housing Corps to increase the supply of housing in the state, and suggested that Maine “work toward universal, single payer healthcare.” In an X post announcing her run for Senate, Bellows said she supports Medicare for All.
Jordan Wood: Wood ran for the House seat in Maine’s second congressional district this year, garnering just shy of 29 percent of the vote. Wood was former Representative Katie Porter’s chief of staff and vice president of End Citizens United, a group that seeks to end the influence of money in politics.
Like most of the other candidates, Wood supports Medicare for All and believes that Israel is committing a genocide, and that any U.S. aid to the country must come with conditions. In an interview with The New Republic, Wood also emphasized his support for universal childcare, said that the Senate needs new leadership, and said that the Senate should get rid of the filibuster.
He expressed concern that the other candidates for the Senate seat haven’t yet explained their views on national policy: “I don’t have any idea what they think of future leadership. I don’t know what they think about the filibuster. You wouldn’t ask those questions at a debate for the governor’s race,” he said.
Dan Kleban: Kleban is the co-founder of Maine Beer Company in Freeport. He ran for Senate in late 2025, but dropped out of the race to support Governor Janet Mills just one month later.
In a Substack post announcing his candidacy on Wednesday, Kleban emphasized his status as a political outsider but didn’t share any policy proposals. “I’ve spent years talking to Mainers over a beer in our taproom and throughout the community. We’re all sick and tired of a system that’s been rigged by corporate interests, and we’ve had enough meddling from Washington establishment insiders and New York City consultants trying to dictate who represents us,” he wrote.
Paige Loud: Loud is a social worker who, like Wood, ran for the House seat in the second district. She received 10 percent of the vote. Loud has a progressive platform that emphasizes health care and food security. She supports Medicare for All, raising and tying the minimum wage to inflation, and eliminating the Social Security income cap. She has called for an end to the genocide in Gaza and for a block on all U.S. weapons transfers to Israel.
David Costello: Costello ran in the Democratic primary for Senate and received 8 percent of the vote (Platner received 72 percent).
Costello shared a list of his policy priorities with The New Republic. They include Medicare for All, universal childcare, an elimination of the payroll tax cap, judicial and legislative term limits, and a ban on gerrymandering (among other proposals).
He’s also called for an “end to presidential wars of choice and holding allies and foes accountable for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and other human rights violations.”
In an email, Costello emphasized his experience in government, having served as an aide to Maine’s secretary of state, the mayor of Baltimore, and the governor of Maryland.
