WASHINGTON — Democrats are growing anxious that the Graham Platner fiasco has left them with just under four months to throw a campaign together for a new candidate and to get the oyster farmer’s base of loyal followers to “cool off” from his implosion.
While many Dem strategists argue that Platner’s announced exit has improved their chances against incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), they acknowledge that the debacle created a lot of headaches for the party, eerily reminiscent of where they were under Joe Biden two years ago.
“Good riddance to Nepo Nazi, Oyster Adolf, Maine Kampf. It can only go up from here,” one Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill vented to The Post. “But this ridiculous and preventable episode surely did not help anything.”
Maine is generally seen as a must-win seat for Democrats to retake the Senate.
A fresh batch of polling from Z to A Research, which is aligned with Democratic hopeful Nirav Shah, found that incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is within the margin of error of all the major potential candidates tested. Before June, Platner consistently had a comfortable lead over her.
“This was always going to be an expensive, hard-fought race regardless of who the Democratic candidate is,” former Jill Biden spokesman Michael LaRosa explained, pointing to Collins’ history of overperforming polls.
“With less than three months before early voting begins, the Sanders-Warren-PodSaveAmerica Mamdani experiment in Maine has exploded in all of our faces, and I’m not especially optimistic that our chances of finally unseating Collins have improved.”
One lingering source of unease is that, as of press time, Platner has not yet filed the paperwork needed to officially withdraw his name from the race, despite committing to doing so in a bitter video message on Wednesday.
If he fails to formally withdraw by 5 pm ET next Monday, he will be stuck on the ballot, which many Democrats have described as a nightmare scenario.
Platner’s angry announcement video — released after an ex accused him of rape and dozens of Democrats called for him to drop out — didn’t help matters either. In the clip, he lashed out at the Democratic establishment, fuming over how his access to voter data and funding would get cut off if he stayed in the race and accusing the party of pushing the damning stories against him to force him out.
His allies have also fueled concerns among lefty voters that the Maine Democratic Party won’t have a fair process to replace him.
“It was a pretty angry video, really much more than I expected it to be, and I think there’s going to be some very hurt feelings because he was really well-liked,” Democratic strategist and Zenith Polls founder Adam Carlson said.
“I think it’s going to take some time to cool off; that’s why I think the next few weeks are really crucial because we’re in uncharted waters here.”
Still, Carlson feels “Democrats have a better chance now, regardless of who the replacement is,” than they did with Platner.
Many Republicans are insisting the opposite is true — at least publicly.
“If I were a betting man, I would say it dramatically increases the chances that Republicans will keep the Senate,” GOP strategist John Feehery told The Post. “They need to be perfect to beat Susan Collins, and this is clearly not going to be a perfect campaign.”
Democratic strategist Caitlin Legacki harkened back to her time working for former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) when she was vying against Todd Akin, who faced a firestorm for his comments about “legitimate rape” when discussing abortion policy in the 2012 race.
“I don’t think it’s like the way that anyone would ever choose to run a campaign, but the fact that we’re four months out from the election and she doesn’t yet know who her opponent is is a huge degree of uncertainty that political candidates really, really hate,” Legacki stressed.
“It was truly a nightmare scenario for us to like find out at the last minute that the person we thought we were running against is not who we’re running against and you have to start completely from scratch,” she said of fears Akin might drop out in the 2012 race, which ultimately didn’t happen.
Legacki agrees with Carlson that Democrats are in a better position now that Platner is expected to drop out of the race, but she also cautioned that Collins is “very, very talented as a campaigner.”
Republicans will likely try to tie whomever Democrats pick to Platner and his plethora of scandals, though Democratic strategist Brad Bannon believes the effectiveness of that depends on who gets tapped as the nominee.
Right now, an early favorite is former president of the Maine Senate Troy Jackson, who finished third in the Democratic gubernatorial primary and campaigned with Platner even after some of the scandals emerged.
“We’re going to have to wait a couple of weeks before we judge the impact. It depends on who replaces them on the ballot,” Bannon said of the fallout from Platner’s exit. “It’s tough. I mean, whoever the new candidate’s going to be will have less than four months to put together a Senate campaign.”
“The time constraints make it difficult, but if you look at the numbers, it’s certainly still possible for the Democrats to win.”
