The Maine Democrats running to replace Graham Platner as their party’s nominee for Senate are seeking to turn the page from the former standard-bearer without abandoning his supporters.

At least seven Democrats are competing in what’s been a two-week campaign for the nomination to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins, a longtime Democratic target in one of this fall’s most high-profile races. The process is poised to culminate with a party convention in Bangor on July 25, two days before state law requires the Maine Democratic Party to select a new nominee. 

What’s essentially a snap primary developed last week after Platner ended his campaign after facing an allegation of sexual assault, which he denied. That left the state party with roughly two weeks to pick its new nominee. Several Democrats who sought other elected office this year have dusted off their campaigns and are pitching themselves as the party’s best option to right the ship in the Senate race.

“You poured your hearts, your time and your energy into building this movement, alongside another candidate in Maine, and I know that there’s real pain, anger and disappointment,” Troy Jackson, the former state Senate president who ran for governor this year, said Monday during a virtual town hall with the progressive group Our Revolution, which has endorsed him for Senate. “But look, this movement has always been bigger than one person.”

Jordan Wood, a former Capitol Hill staffer who ran for Senate before shifting to the 2nd District, said the nominee needs to be able to unify the party and demonstrate independence from Platner’s campaign. Wood, who finished third in the 2nd District primary last month, argued that he was best-suited to achieve both those goals, given that he called on Platner to leave the Senate race last fall after reports that he had made several derogatory posts on Reddit and had a tattoo depicting a Nazi symbol on his chest.

“It is very important that who we nominate out of the convention at the end of the month be able to very quickly separate themselves from that candidate,” Wood said at a Monday news conference. “Republicans are going to try throughout November to just sow distrust about our nominee, about our party, and there needs to be a way to cleanly separate from that.”

Meanwhile, Nirav Shah, another former gubernatorial candidate who received the most first-round votes in last month’s Democratic primary but lost after ranked choice tabulations, rolled out a policy platform Monday that included policies such as “Medicare for All” and imposing higher taxes on the wealthy and large corporations.

Other Democrats seeking the nomination include Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who challenged Collins in 2014; Dan Kleban, the founder of Maine Beer Company who briefly ran for Senate last year before endorsing Gov. Janet Mills; David Costello, who placed third in last month’s Senate primary; and social worker Paige Loud, who ran for the 2nd District nomination this year. 

Senate hopefuls have until 5 p.m. Wednesday to file as candidates and until July 20 to submit the required 500 signatures to be considered at the convention. 

Politico reported Tuesday that Jackson, Bellows, Shah and Wood would all take part in a debate hosted by Portland NBC affiliate News Center Maine. The news outlet said the candidates qualified for the debate because they each received at least 20 percent of the vote in their June primary contests, but Kleban’s campaign pushed back on that standard. 

“Dan is not a politician and wasn’t on the ballot last month. That shouldn’t prevent him from being invited to next Thursday’s debate,” Kleban’s campaign said in a statement.

Deciding the delegates

As candidates get their campaigns off the ground and roll out policy positions, they are also seeking supporters to run as delegates for the July 25 convention, where 601 delegates will pick the new Senate nominee.

Anyone who was registered as a Democrat as of June 9  – the day of Maine’s primary elections – is eligible to run as a delegate. Each county is set to hold nominating meetings this weekend, with a collective 500 delegates emerging from those gatherings. The number of delegates a county elects is tied to its population. Members of the Maine Democratic Party’s state committee and executive committee would make up the remaining 101 delegates. 

At the convention, delegates will take several rounds of votes, if needed, until one candidate receives a majority of votes cast. Subsequent rounds of voting would include all candidates except for the previous round’s last place finisher. 

While delegates will not be pledged to individual candidates, some campaigns were soliciting supporters to run for delegate. On social media Tuesday, Shah urged Mainers “to apply to become a Shah delegate.”

Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution, said during Monday’s virtual town hall that the group was working to turn out delegate candidates who would support Jackson this weekend.

“This is the perfect opportunity for us to show the establishment that we can organize and win within the system that they created,” he said.  

Progressives, who had supported Platner’s populist message, are hoping to maintain their momentum in the state, as well as in other key Senate primaries in Michigan and Minnesota next month. 

But many of the candidates in Maine have urged national party leaders to stay out of the Senate race, and most congressional Democrats have so far heeded that advice. The exceptions include California Rep. Ro Khanna, a onetime Platner supporter who has since endorsed Jackson, and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who said she opposed Shah over his handling of a disease outbreak at an Illinois veterans home when he served as the state’s public health director. 

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York hadn’t publicly weighed in as of Tuesday afternoon. 

‘ICE off our streets’

Meanwhile, Monday’s fatal shooting of a Colombian driver in Biddeford, Maine, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent has also brought the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policy to the forefront of the race, underscoring an issue that has been a focus in other Democratic primaries this year.

“It’s time to get ICE off our streets,” Bellows said in a social media post

Other candidates criticized Collins’ vote earlier this year to provide nearly $70 billion for immigration enforcement without new restrictions on federal immigration agents. 

“While the investigation of the Biddeford shooting is not yet complete, it raises sufficient critical questions that I spoke with [Homeland Security Secretary Markywayne Mullin] last night and urged him to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops,” Collins said in a Tuesday statement. 

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the administration had ordered ICE officers to suspend most vehicle stops across the country. 

Collins joined the rest of Maine’s congressional delegation Tuesday in calling for an investigation into the shooting. In a social media post, she highlighted provisions in a recent Homeland Security spending measure such as $20 million for expanding the use of body cameras and $2 million for deescalation training but blamed Democrats over the delay in the bill’s enactment, citing a partial government shutdown earlier this year.

“While it is clear ICE needs to improve its performance, it is important to remember that the work ICE does to protect our country goes far beyond immigration enforcement,” Collins said. “Eliminating ICE would make our country less safe and endanger the lives and welfare of countless individuals.”