Platner Won. Democrats Are Scared.

BLUE HILL, Maine — Democrats are projecting public confidence about the Maine Senate race in the wake of Graham Platner’s primary victory on Tuesday, insisting they can defeat incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November.

Privately, however, many in the party are despondent about his chances, believing that his personal baggage has put a winnable race at risk and upended their path to securing a Senate majority next year. Some have written the contest off entirely, choosing to focus on other Senate races that are even more difficult for Democrats, like Iowa and Texas.

Everything, from deciding how to spend their money in the general election to how they navigate what members of their own party said about Platner during the primary, is now going to have an outsized role.

“Broadly speaking, donors, operatives and everybody else is taking a pretty close look at this and wondering if it’s worth it, or if there’s going to be another shoe that drops either next week or in October,” said one Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It just doesn’t feel worth the investment when this guy has proven to be so untrustworthy.”

Platner spoke at his election night party Tuesday behind a podium bearing a poster reading “They Don’t Know Maine.” It’s a message that encapsulates the campaign’s argument that voters in the state will prove the naysayers wrong. But Platner’s speech was largely conciliatory, at least toward the Democratic voters who’ve been openly anxious about his viability.

“If you believe as I do that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner said early in his victory speech. “And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it.”

He acknowledged he had made “mistakes,” that he is “still far from perfect.” But, he said, “every day, I wake up and I try to be a little bit better and a little bit kinder than I was the day before.”

Still, he picked his targets.

“Now the national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by,” Platner said. “But in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us.”

Platner is looking like a dream scenario for Republicans in November. Last week, The New York Times reported on the accounts of several women who dated the oyster farmer and combat veteran, alleging past intimidating behavior toward them. His campaign also recently confirmed that he had exchanged sexually explicit texts with multiple women who weren’t his wife early in their marriage. That’s on top of the many inflammatory online comments he made in the past, which he’s apologized for, and a tattoo that looked like a Nazi symbol, which he’s since covered up.

Those controversies have generated speculation about the party moving to replace Platner as their nominee. State election law allows a swap as long as the primary winner drops out by July 13.

“If there’s a way to replace him on the ballot, I’d be all for it,” Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Illinois) told CNN on Monday, even before the primary contest that pitted Platner against Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who remained on the ballot despite suspending her campaign, had played out.

Now that he’s secured the Democratic nomination, there’s no indication that Platner is considering stepping aside. With his win on Tuesday, most Democrats are looking ahead to the general election.

That included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, who said Collins has “never been more vulnerable.”

“In November, Maine voters will elect Graham Platner, and we will win a Senate majority,” the two New York Democrats said in a statement that made only a passing reference to the Maine Senate candidate.

Ahead of polls closing, party leaders were coming to terms with the idea that it wasn’t a question of whether Platner would win Tuesday, but by how much.

“I think there’s sort of a bit of a parlor game in Washington about, like, what if this happened, and that next thing happened. But at the end of the day, Maine voters are pretty clear about what they think,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota), who met with Platner last week, told NOTUS. “I’m sure it’ll be an interesting general election, but I think he can win.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said the choice for Maine voters is clear between a candidate “fighting every day for working people in Maine” and the incumbent senator who “works to defend a lawless Trump administration and a president who says he doesn’t care about Americans’ finances.”

Still, Platner faces plenty of skeptics in his party who are concerned by the wave of controversies he’s faced.

“I’m troubled by it, and that’s why I’m focused on other races where I know the candidates and we can win, and we’ve got to flip the Senate,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), who endorsed Mills in the primary.

Democrats need to gain a net of four seats to win majority control of the Senate this year, a feat party operatives have considered increasingly possible amid a deteriorating political environment for Republicans.

Maine, the only 2024 blue state with a Senate seat held by a Republican running for re-election this year, had been widely considered one of the party’s best pickup opportunities, alongside races in North Carolina, Ohio and Alaska.

If Democrats don’t win in Maine, the party would likely need to win an additional seat in either of the deep red states of Texas or Iowa to have a chance at the majority.

Voters in Maine are feeling the weight of the party’s chances on their shoulders.

“I think the pressure is immense,” Scott Sell, a 43-year-old multimedia producer in Rockland who voted for Platner, told NOTUS outside a voting site in the city.

“Conversations with people, especially my age, are hopeful and energetic, but I think underneath it all is like, there’s a lot riding on this,” Sell said. “Flipping this Senate seat is crucial. It’s a once-in-our-lifetime situation. It feels like it, anyway.”

Sell said he would not discount the strength of Maine’s older, conservative voters.

Another voter, Ken, who declined to give his last name, cast a ballot for Mills in “protest,” he said. He bemoaned that Platner emerged as the front-runner.

“The Republican attack machine is pretty strong, and I think they’ve got a lot of ammo against him, just based on everything that’s come in,” Ken said.

Still, several voters said they were confident in Platner’s chances of beating Collins. “If someone told me I had to bet money, I would bet twice on Platner,” said Eric Vos, an independent, after casting a ballot for him.

Vos said he thinks most people in the state aren’t viewing this election in terms of which party tips the scales of power in D.C. “That’s for talking heads in D.C.,” he said.

Even strategists skeptical of Platner’s campaign maintain he can win in November, if the political environment continues to worsen for the Republican Party. But they say that, at minimum, he’s made the seat much more difficult to win than it would have been had Mills or another Democrat been the nominee.

Meanwhile, Collins’ path to keeping her seat depends on maintaining support from a cohort of mostly older moderate and independent women, many of whom vote for Democratic presidential candidates but have also been drawn to the incumbent’s more moderate brand of politics, say party strategists.

Platner’s recent controversies, they fear, will likely repel many of those voters.

“It’s the 60-year-old white ladies, who are impervious to paid communication, who have voted for Susan Collins for decades, who are going to decide this election,” said a second Democratic strategist, reflecting a broadly held view among many Democrats who work in Maine.

Maria Chase, a Platner voter in Blue Hill, arrived at a similar assessment. It almost hurt his chances of winning her vote in the primary, she said.

“I’ve never had to make that kind of choice before of ‘Well, do I believe this woman? Do I believe she could be lying? Would I not vote for him if I knew exactly that it was true?’” she said. “Those are questions that I haven’t really had to ask myself too much.”