Maine progressives race to find candidate to replace Graham Platner

Graham Platner dropped out of the race for a Maine US Senate seat after the latest allegation of sexual assault. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters View image in fullscreen Graham Platner dropped out of the race for a Maine US Senate seat after the latest allegation of sexual assault. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters Maine progressives race to find candidate to replace Graham Platner Platner’s former backers are seeking ‘real progressive’ to prevent nomination going to establishment Democrat US politics live – latest updates Progressive groups and lawmakers who rallied behind Graham Platner’s insurgent bid for a US Senate seat are now racing to decide where to transfer their support after his withdrawal from the Maine race following yet another allegation of sexual assault. The scramble and apparent heartbreak underscores the uncertainty facing the coalition surrounding Platner’s anti-establishment message, and the response from more centrist Democrats to proceed with caution. Organizations, voters, volunteers and elected officials that once saw him as a vehicle for a more populist progressive agenda are now weighing whether to unite behind a successor, or hold back until the party’s replacement process plays out. So far, only a small number of former Platner allies have moved publicly toward a new candidate, leaving a key bloc of progressive voters and activists up for grabs. Maine contenders: the Democrats who could replace Graham Platner Read more The clearest early move has come from Our Revolution, the group descended from Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, which said on Thursday it was throwing its “full organizing machine” behind Troy Jackson, the former Maine state senate president who launched a his bid within an hour of Platner’s exit. “Maine’s progressives didn’t win the primary by a fluke,” the group’s executive director, Joseph Geevarghese, said in a statement, arguing that the primary’s mandate – Medicare for All, a campaign free of corporate money, an end to “forever wars” – survives Platner’s departure even if he does not. “That mandate deserves to be honored.” Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and longtime union member who ran unsuccessfully for governor this year and landed in third place, campaigned alongside both Platner and Sanders during the primary season and has positioned himself as the continuation of that movement rather than a late entry capitalizing on Platner’s collapse. Other prominent progressives have begun lining up behind him. Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who had been one of Platner’s most visible congressional backers before rescinding his endorsement this week, shifted his support to being “all in” for Jackson as the movement’s likely standard bearer, as has the streamer Hasan Piker . The Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which endorsed Jackson’s gubernatorial run in May, has not yet made a formal Senate endorsement but has an existing organizing relationship with his campaign. Maine Pe