Candidates entering the Maine Senate race after Graham Platner suspended his campaign following a rape allegation are walking a fine line between distancing themselves from the disgraced candidate and embracing his base, which they’ll need to beat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in November.
As of Friday, at least six candidates have officially declared that they will enter the race, with others still considering their options. All of them have been wary of aligning themselves too closely with Platner, who had already been plagued by scandal before being accused of rape by an ex-girlfriend. But they run the risk of alienating Platner’s energized base if they distance themselves too much from his policy commitments such as fighting military spending, ending the genocide in Gaza, advocating for Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and strengthening protections for unions.
In the running are at least six candidates, three of whom who lost in Maine’s Democratic gubernatorial primary in June. Former state Sen. Troy Jackson, whose gubernatorial campaign was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was the first to enter the race. Next came Dr. Nirav Shah, who previously directed the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
Brewery co-founder Dan Kleban, who dropped out of the Maine Democratic Senate primary and endorsed Gov. Janet Mills in October, also entered the race this week, as did social worker Paige Loud and former Capital Hill staffer Jordan Wood, both of whom lost the primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
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Of the first three candidates, Shah has faced the most skepticism of his progressive bona fides, despite what he says is his long-standing support for universal healthcare, dating back to his time as a public health official and his career as a doctor, and his stance against the genocide in Gaza, expressed during the gubernatorial campaign. His critics have painted his declarations of support for Medicare for All and focus on criticism of Israel amid his Senate launch as an effort to pivot to the left after taking a more measured approach as a candidate in the gubernatorial primary.
He told The Intercept that those criticisms are a mischaracterization of his record.
“Critics who are suggesting that this is a newfound policy position, they are putting politics over the facts,” Shah said.
Asked if he would echo Platner’s call to abolish ICE outright, Shah said the agency is “out of control” and “cannot continue to exist” in its current form. “Whether we reform ICE, whether we disband it and start from scratch, or whether we transfer their duties to CBP, ICE, as it currently is constituted, cannot continue to exist,” he said.
Like Shah, Jackson and Bellows are now doing their best to prove to Platner’s base that they will carry out his policy vision.
While Platner was a vocal critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jackson faced criticism for not mentioning Israel or Gaza in his Senate launch on Wednesday. But a day later, he issued a statement denouncing the genocide in Gaza as “unconscionable” and saying he would “never vote in favor of US taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel.”
Bellows, who differentiated herself from her Shah on issues from labor to renter protections during the gubernatorial primary, has said she’s running on Medicare for All, workers’ rights, and to “protect our neighbors.” She and Jackson both criticized Shah’s gubernatorial campaign for ads backing his campaign run by a group pushing school voucher programs. Maine Education Association, a union of educators, endorsed all three candidates for governor but ranked Shah third.
After challenging Sen. Susan Collins in 2014 and losing by more than 35 percentage points, Bellows was elected to the state Senate in 2016. Bellows has previously led the ACLU of Maine as well as the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine. She has not made many public comments on Israel, but signed a proclamation from Mills recognizing Israel’s 75th anniversary and its “friendship and cooperation” with the U.S. in April 2023.
Shah has also faced claims that he’s taken money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, though the group does not spend in state-level races. He is endorsed by 314 Action, a group that backs candidates with a background in science, which took $1 million from the super PAC for AIPAC in 2024. On Friday, in response to claims that Shah had taken AIPAC money, 314 Action’s executive director said it hadn’t taken money from AIPAC this cycle and would not. He characterized the criticism as “worse than the MAGA scare tactics.”
Shah told The Intercept he has never taken AIPAC money and would not accept it if offered. He also said that he would not support any form of military aid — offensive or defensive — to Israel. He also pointed to a digital ad his campaign ran toward the end of his gubernatorial primary that highlighted “standing against the genocide in Gaza.”
In a campaign kickoff on Thursday, Shah opened the event with remarks from two former Platner volunteers before highlighting what he said was “little daylight” between their platforms. He ended the event by telling a reporter he would not seek Platner’s endorsement.
“I spent most of my life watching decisions get made by people who will never have to live with the consequences of them, and my generation is expected to just accept that,” said 18-year-old Liv Drewniak, co-founder of the group Midcoast Youth Activists and a former youth organizer and volunteer for Platner’s campaign.
“It was never about one person. It was about a movement.”
“I thought that my time of feeling powerless had come to an end when I started working with the Platner campaign, but the last few days of news have been heartbreaking, and I saw all the hard-fought and harder-won progress that I was so invested in crumble before me,” Drewniak said.
“But then I remembered why I was so excited for that change in the first place. It was never about one person. It was about a movement, a movement hand-built by the people of Maine. And that momentum has not stalled, and that energy will never fail. It will now have a new leader.”
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A senator from a different state weighed in on the new crop of candidates on Friday. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said Shah should not be the nominee due to his handling of veterans’ health issues in her home state. Duckworth and her Senate colleague Dick Durbin called on Shah to resign in 2018 over his handling of a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak at a veterans’ facility.
Shah said the attack was “recycled” after his critics raised it during his gubernatorial primary campaign. He said he had addressed voters’ questions about the outbreak, and his campaign noted that Collins had complimented his response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Maine.
“I have deep respect for Senator Duckworth and the sacrifices she has made for our country. I’m the outsider in this race, and outsiders get attacked, so I want to speak directly to the people of Maine, because they’ve seen this playbook before,” Shah said in a statement to The Intercept.
“Voters can judge my record by this: a Democratic Presidential administration reviewed my record and then hired me to help lead the U.S. CDC. … Mainers made up their own minds and that’s why they gave me more first-choice votes than any other candidate in the gubernatorial primary.”
“The people of Maine saw with their own eyes who I am during the pandemic, when I stood at that podium every day and told them the truth, even when it was hard,” he said. “I’d invite people to ask when Susan Collins last did the same. Every day Democrats spend attacking Democrats is another day Collins doesn’t have to answer for her record. I won’t take that bait, and I don’t believe Mainers will either.”
The Maine Democratic Party will hold a nominating convention to choose one candidate; it must submit its pick by July 27.
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