More than 5,500 Mainers seek a role in choosing Graham Platner’s replacement

More than 5,500 Mainers have submitted their names to help choose Graham Platner’s replacement in the U.S. Senate race, as the Maine Democratic Party prepares for a first-of-its-kind convention to select a new nominee.

That figure includes Democrats looking to attend county caucuses this weekend to select the delegates to represent them, and those seeking to become delegates themselves, who will be responsible for voting in a replacement at the party’s July 25 convention. The assembly in Bangor will bring together 500 delegates from Maine’s 16 counties and 100 party members.

The party has until July 27 to choose Platner’s replacement after he dropped out of the race last week amid sexual assault allegations. The mini convention, about a third the size of its annual conventions, was the most transparent way to select a candidate, the party said. Whoever is chosen as the replacement will be fighting to flip a pivotal U.S. Senate seat held for decades by Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

Thirteen candidates have submitted declarations of intent to the party chair as of Wednesday evening. The field includes three former gubernatorial candidates — Shenna Bellows, Troy Jackson and Nirav Shah — as well as Jordan Wood, who initially entered the Senate race before switching his candidacy to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Many of the other candidates are lesser-known political newcomers.

County Democrats will select their delegates during virtual or in-person meetings scheduled for July 18 and 19. The number of delegates each county will send varies widely, from 149 in Cumberland County to just four in Piscataquis County.

“I truly believe this is the strongest process we could have put in place to ensure Democrats from every corner of Maine have a voice,” said Wayne Kinney, chair of the county chairs caucus, in a statement. “I’m proud to say that all 16 county Democratic committees stand behind this process because it’s fair, thoughtful and puts Maine Democrats at the center of choosing our nominee.”

The process allows Democrats who were registered with the party on or before June 9 to participate. It does not include independent voters, however, even though they were able to vote in the primary and chose to vote in the Democratic primary by roughly a three-to-one margin, based on absentee ballot figures.

Some of the 13 candidates will face each other in debates leading up to the convention, with the first scheduled for Thursday evening. Hosted by NewsCenterMaine, the debate will feature the four well-known candidates in the first hour (who were all on the ballot in June and received more than 20% of the vote) and five candidates who either didn’t run in a race or received less than 20% of the votes the next hour, including David Costello, Elizabeth Dickerson, Dan Kleban, Paige Loud, and Ashley Webb.