Maine Votes as Graham Platner’s Past Poses New Conundrums

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**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:27)
From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is The Daily. On Tuesday, Mainers will vote in a primary for a high-stakes Senate seat that Democrats think they can win back from Republicans for the first time in decades. They're pinning their hopes on progressive Democrat Graham Platner, a charismatic oyster farmer and a combat veteran with a populist message. But Platner's faced a string of accusations surrounding his personal behavior, including new reporting in The Times that broke last week. Today, my colleagues Lisa Lerer and Katie Glueck explain what this race means for Maine and for the prospects of the Democratic Party.
It's Tuesday, June 9th. Hi, Lisa.

**Lisa Lerer** (1:33)
Hi.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:34)
Hi, Katie.

**Lisa Lerer** (1:35)
Hi.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:36)
So we have you here because you two broke this story late last week, and I think it's fair to say that it generated a huge reaction.

**Lisa Lerer** (1:49)
I think that's fair to say. It's been quite the wild couple of days. I think this story has really divided voters and strategists and the chattering political class, not only in Maine, but just all over the country.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:03)
Just to lay it out, this was a story about the experiences of past girlfriends of Graham Platner, allegations of heavy drinking, physical intimidation. These were not allegations of anything criminal, no allegations of domestic abuse, but some pretty rough stuff. And we're going to get deeper into that reporting. But before we do that, just explain for me the stakes of what we're talking about here, the stakes of this race.

**Katie Glueck** (2:33)
I think that in part, it reflects just how critical this race is. Maine is all but essential to the Democrats' path to retaking the Senate.
But even before there was any serious talk of who the Democratic nominee could or should be, Maine loomed so large in the minds of Democrats because they thought last time that Susan Collins was on the ballot that she was finally going to lose. Instead, she wins. And so going in to 2026, people were extremely motivated to finally mount a campaign that could actually defeat Senator Collins.

**Lisa Lerer** (3:15)
You know, and I also think this race, it's a place where they have really tested this thesis, which many Democrats believe that the party needs new energy, new leadership, more authentic messengers. And they are testing that through this candidate, Graham Platner, who is likely to be their Democratic nominee in this race.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (3:38)
Okay, so a lot riding on this, both in terms of the numbers, as you guys have said, and in terms of these broader ideas of what the Democratic Party's identity is. Let's just talk about how we got here, set up this contest for us.

**Lisa Lerer** (3:54)
So at the very beginning of this contest, there was really a widespread expectation that the Democratic nominee would be Janet Mills, who is the 78-year-old two-term governor of Maine. She was the candidate that was the pick of Chuck Schumer, who really is in charge of Democrats' ambitions for the Senate.
She had the political staff. She was just a well-known Democratic leader in this state. And then over last summer, some progressive operatives and activists decided that they were really unhappy with Mills as the pick. And so they went up to Maine and started looking for someone else who could challenge Janet Mills in the Democratic primary. And they found Graham Platner, who at the time was running a small oyster farm in coastal Maine. He had moved back up in 2016 after spending some time in Washington, serving in the military. He had never run for any elected office.
But they decided that this was the guy who could challenge Janet Mills and, should he win the nomination, eventually Susan Collins.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (4:59)
And why pick him? I get that he reads as homegrown, you know, he's a little rough around the edges in a kind of everyman way. But what about him specifically felt like the right choice for these progressives? How did they actually land on this guy?

**Lisa Lerer** (5:16)
They had seen a video that he had done as part of, like, an aquaculture association, sort of related to the oysters.