The Official Graham Platner Replacement Tier List

Looking over the best paths forward to defeating Susan Collins after the shameful end of a shameful chapter.

This Monday, one of the most shameful chapters in modern left-wing electoral history closed in sordid fashion. After almost a full calendar year of scandals and disturbing revelations—each of which he assured would be the last—Graham Platner’s Senate campaign ended in complete and utter disgrace following an allegation of rape from one of his former partners. Now, he is out of the race. The project has failed. The dream is dead. He will never be a U.S. Senator.

Over the coming months and years, there will be oceans of ink spilled about what this entire story has meant. How, exactly, did an unstable and unqualified psycho so easily capture the hearts and minds of liberals and leftists the nation over? What does it mean that he, with all of his infinite and well-known flaws, accomplished things at the ballot box that none of his ideological peers have even come close to? How will the electoral left recover from yet another high-profile, high-stakes recruitment disaster? These are all incredibly important questions, and they are all dwarfed by the task at hand: finding some way to go from this to defeating Susan Collins in November.

It’s not nearly as hopeless as it sounds. Mercifully—and not at all coincidentally—these campaign-destroying allegations dropped in the middle of the grace period in which parties in Maine can replace their nominees after they drop out. Since Platner exited the race before July 13th, Maine Democrats have between now and July 27th to select a new nominee for the race. It’s a huge opportunity. Before Monday, Maine Democrats were in something of a reverse Goldilocks situation: stuck with a nominee who was damaged enough to lose the very winnable race, but not quite so damaged that he could be forced out. Now, with the full extent of Platner’s degeneracy made clear, they have a chance to wipe the slate clean and put themselves in a significantly stronger situation with a new candidate that Maine voters actually like. In a state where voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Senate over a Republican-controlled one by a full 12 points, just having someone recognized as a normal Democrat on the ballot could very well be all that they need.

Actually getting to that point, however, is far easier said than done. As things stand, whoever the party selects as Platner’s replacement will have less than four months to get an entire operation going from the ground up against a five-term incumbent loaded with cash. Many of his plausible replacements will be running against a Republican at the statewide level for the first time ever. Within their own party, they will have to deal with the fact that Platner and his staunchly anti-establishment platform received significant support just one month ago in the actual Senate primary. If the party goes too far in one direction, their candidate could be defined as the hand-picked choice of a psychotic rapist. If they go far in the other direction, they could be defined as an establishment toady forced on the voters in a full-on coup. You won’t be able to win the race just by selecting the first liberal you find on the street—not with this little time, this awful of a setup, and these many considerations.

Since the revelations on Monday, we’ve already seen a flurry of Maine Democrats floated for the spot. Some are terrible, others are better, and nearly all carry some kind of risk. But “nearly all” is not the same as “all.” Within a long list of craven opportunists and desperate bets are some genuinely strong options—so strong that they could not only put Collins right back on the path to defeat, but still make the election the kind of win for the left that Platner’s campaign once promised to be. To get to them, we’ll start from the bottom.

F Tier

Gov. Janet Mills