Maine Senate Primary

Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and the former harbormaster of Sullivan, Maine, has won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Platner, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has run on a progressive, populist platform, calling for universal health care, raising the federal minimum wage, and ending U.S. military aid to Israel. His campaign has also been marked by scandals, including resurfaced Reddit posts where Platner made derogatory remarks about rural Americans, police officers, and Black people; the revelation of a skull-and-bones tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi Totenkopf insignia; and allegations that he has sexted with multiple women after marrying in 2023. In the final days of the primary race, the Times reported that several of Platner’s ex-girlfriends have described him, variously, as contemptuous of women, unfaithful, and generally “unsettling.” His most serious challenger, Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, had suspended her campaign, in April. Platner has been endorsed by national progressive figures such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

On the Republican side, the incumbent, Susan Collins, ran unopposed. Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has been a senator for almost thirty years, during which time she has never missed a vote in the chamber. She is considered a moderate Republican, and won her election in 2020 by a significant margin, despite former President Joe Biden winning the majority of votes in Maine that year. President Donald Trump declined to endorse Collins, but many in the Republican establishment have declared their support, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Vice-President J. D. Vance.

Maine Second Congressional District Primary

In Maine’s Second District, where the incumbent congressman Jared Golden opted not to run for reëlection, Joe Baldacci, a state senator from Bangor, won the Democratic primary. His leading challenger had been Matthew Dunlap, the state auditor and Maine’s former secretary of state, who ran to Baldacci’s left. Jordan Wood, who served as the chief of staff for the former U.S. representative Katie Porter, also mounted a surprisingly successful campaign, running on a platform focussed on campaign-finance reform.

On the Republican side, the nominee will be Paul LePage, who served two terms as the state’s governor. LePage’s tenure was marked by several attempts to circumvent the state legislature; he vetoed more bills than every Maine governor from the previous hundred years combined. LePage’s controversial statements include endorsing child labor for kids as young as twelve; saying that drug dealers from Connecticut with names like “D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” come up to Maine to sell heroin and to impregnate young white girls; telling the N.A.A.C.P. that they could “kiss my butt” after he refused to attend Martin Luther King, Jr., Day events; and calling the I.R.S. the “new Gestapo.” After finishing his second term as governor, LePage took a break from politics and worked as a bartender at McSeagull’s, a seafood restaurant in Boothbay Harbor.