Platner's Hostage Negotiation
17 more thoughts on Maine & The Movement (and something to do!)
Things could get funky in Maine on Monday.
Republican odds of winning the Senate race in Maine have gone down, both in the betting markets (from 47% to 37%) and in GOP circles. Check out Politico on how Collins’ allies think Platner’s exit makes her reelection bid tougher.
That Democratic optimism is from Graham Platner withdrawing from the Senate race. Which he has to do by Monday at 5pm. But has not done yet. At 8pm Wednesday, Graham Platner released a fiery 11 minute video. He reportedly demanded to post the video in exchange for acquiescing to his advisors’ calls to drop out (the man has leverage on everyone!). He rejected their calls for him to be gracious in the video.
It may have been “tense” but it was not the “final hours.” Thursday afternoon, Holly Otterbein reported Platner had not filed his withdrawal with the Secretary of State yet.
He is in fact waiting until the last possible time: “Graham Platner privately told staff that he is planning to officially file paperwork to end his Senate campaign on Monday — the drop-dead deadline for him to exit the race.
What are the odds Platner doesn’t file his withdrawal? Yesterday, I thought 10%. As of 8am Friday, 36 hours after Platner’s video, betting markets think 4%. These odds may seem low, but Welcome has long articulated the value in considering low-but-real-probability and high-impact events. And we long ago realized that in the modern era of weak parties, you can’t count on “The Democrats” to take care of such things.
There may be valid reasons for a campaign to delay. But, given his patterns of behavior, I’d sure feel better with more transparency and specificity on when exactly Platner will give up his significant leverage. He has until 5pm on Monday to send a fax or image of a signed withdrawal letter to the Secretary of State.
Speaking of the Secretary of State, the current holder of that office announced her second run for Senate yesterday. Shenna Bellows was the nominee in 2014, losing by 37 points (that’s thirty seven) in a state that Barack Obama won by 15 points two years earlier. 2014 was a bad year for Democrats and Susan Collins was an established moderate candidate … but running 52 points behind is a lot.
Bellows was endorsed for governor by The Maine People’s Alliance, a state-based progressive umbrella group. It is structured like the the groups we covered in Centrist School on the entrepreneurial ecosystem pushing Democrats far to the left. Maine People’s Alliance is one such hub for “The Movement” that the Platner camp keeps talking about. The umbrella group raises and spends millions of dollars each year, with funding from Soros and others - including a recent $600,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and $500,000 from the federal government for “a community-led program to invest in the workforce development necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” This isn’t hidden stuff. You can find it in public databases on the Inflation Reduction Act or the Ford Foundation grantee database:
You can see a copy of their candidate questionnaire here, which includes decriminalizing drug possession.
This is not an allegation of illegality. It is simply a fact that organizations like Maine People’s Alliance are working 365 days a year in all 50 states in a way that no centrist-aligned group is. Such facts are usually touted by right-leaning outlets, and so anti-MAGA people fall prey to the Fox News Fallacy described by Ruy Teixeira: Democrats will ignore anything Republicans say, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
Maine People’s Alliance also endorsed Graham Platner: The member-led board of directors of Maine People’s Alliance has announced that it has voted unanimously to endorse Graham Platner in his primary run to face Sen. Susan Collins as the Democratic candidate for the 2026 U.S. Senate race. MPA Board Co-Chair Gina Morin (they/them) said, “Listening to [Platner] during interviews and town halls, it is clear that he addresses the critical issues affecting our country and, specifically, Maine” … Platner, an oyster farmer and veteran from Sullivan, has been an active member of MPA’s Penobscot County chapter, helping us hold Sen. Susan Collins accountable to constituents. Last winter, he joined fellow MPA members in Washington, D.C., in a march to protect access to health care. Shortly after this, he began organizing locally in Hancock County, helping build grassroots power closer to home.
Guess where Platner’s campaign manager worked for the past decade? You’ll be shocked to learn the guy who spent the last decade at the Soros-funded political nonprofit is the one threatening the Maine Democratic Party.
Matthew Yglesias wrote this morning about the truth that groups like Maine People’s Alliance work to suppress: “The truth is we know the names of the Democrats who do well with working-class voters. They’re Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in the rural north. They’re Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez in South Texas. They’re Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer and Elissa Slotkin in the Rust Belt. They’re Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs in Arizona. People knock these candidates as too boring, but the truth is that a network of political operatives and sympathetic media figures were incredibly successful at generating enthusiasm for Platner because they felt enthusiastic about the idea of Graham Platner. Which is fine. But if they chose to get excited by — and spread excitement about — people who are actually good at beating Republicans, then Democrats would have a lot less trouble making those candidates seem exciting.”
You can do help change this! By supporting Jamie Ager or Paige Cognetti or Bobby Pulido as they seek to accomplish the Golden-esque feat of winning a Trump +10 district. These candidates are not boring - recall the Jamie Ager mini-documentary - we just haven’t built the platform big enough for people to know them!
Heck, go look at Johnny Garcia in TX-35. He’s literally a hostage negotiator. A good comparison: Blue Dogs got the hostage negotiator to win a tough primary against a radical leftist backed by Republicans while Elizabeth Warren’s candidate is holding Democrats hostage in Maine.
Multiple people have asked me about Troy Jackson, the Bernie-backed heir to Platner’s mantle now running for Senate. He was not the Maine People’s Alliance candidate in the gubernatorial race, and is more of a culturally inclusive labor-aligned rural Democrat. I joked yesterday about the awkwardness of someone who’s been constantly running for office since last century and holding many formal Democratic leadership positions (Senate President, DNC superdelegate, etc) inheriting the outsider insurgent mantle. But his record of over-performance is real (as both a Democratic candidate and a Republican candidate), as is his anti-party brand. And parts of his legislative track record - he worked with Republicans to stop the deeply unpopular progressive push to extend government healthcare benefits to illegal immigrants.
Another much-discussed Senate candidate I hadn’t known much about until recently is Jon Ossoff, until I talked to Zack Beauchamp at Vox for this story on Ossoff’s rise as a compromise candidate: “He not only refused to join along with the craziness of 2017 to 2020, but actively explicitly rejected it without becoming defined by the negative,” said Liam Kerr, co-founder of the centrist WelcomePAC. “He seems like someone who plays to win — not someone who plays not to lose.”
If Maine Democrats were playing to win, they’d be on a March on Lewiston right now to ask Jared Golden to be the modern-day Cincinnatus. We’ll see how funky Monday gets!
