In Letter, Platner Volunteer Network Warns Dems: Nominee Must Back Same Agenda to Win Our Full Support
Supporters are drafting a policy demand letter that Maine’s next nominee must publicly commit to if they want support from the largest organizing network in state history.
The 15,000 member volunteer network behind Graham Platner is now using its considerable leverage to push whoever replaces him as the Democratic Senate nominee to be aligned with the same policy platform that drove the largest primary turnout in Maine state history.
Drop Site has obtained a draft letter addressed “to the Maine Democratic Party and prospective candidates” notifying them of their policy demands. Platner formally withdrew from the Senate race on Friday.
Those policies include “healthcare as a right, housing affordability, an economy that works for regular people and not billionaires, strengthening workers and unions, end forever wars, oppose complicity in atrocities, an end to mass-deportation enforcement, energy and climate accountability, and human rights for all.”
“The volunteer infrastructure that this movement built - the organizers, door-knockers, the small-dollar donors, the hosts, the people who make phone calls and staff tables between now and November - does not transfer automatically to whoever the Party selects,” the letter states. “That infrastructure exists because people believe in a specific platform. It will only continue to exist and only continue to be deployed for a nominee who publicly and explicitly adopts these core commitments as their own.” (Emphasis in the original.)
While the policies are broadly agreed upon, whether the volunteers will fully withhold support from the new nominee if they do not agree is still being debated. The most hotly contested line in the draft states, “If the Party’s selected nominee does not publicly adopt this platform, we want to be transparent now, before the convention, rather than silent until after it: this statewide volunteer network will not organize, fundraise, or mobilize on that candidate’s behalf.”
The draft makes clear “that is not a threat, but rather a statement of fact about what motivates the people who make up this movement.”
Hundreds of volunteers have already signed onto the letter, with representation from every county in Maine. Several volunteers, however, still felt the language was too strong.
“I think we need to soften this somewhat,” one volunteer noted in the comments. “How about, ‘it will be next to impossible to motivate this statewide volunteer network.” Another volunteer agreed, saying “Everyone’s choice to support the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate is their own. We can’t force anyone to continue or not continue.”
It has not been decided when this letter will be submitted. The State Convention to select a new candidate is expected to take place before the July 27 selection deadline.
The Replacement Process
The Maine Democratic Party’s 100-person state committee voted to approve a process by which 600 delegates, 500 county committee elected delegates, and the 100 state committee members themselves will select the new nominee from a slate of candidates vying to replace Platner. Troy Jackson, Shenna Bellows, Nirav Shah, Dan Kleban, Jordan Wood, and Vallie Geiger are running for the spot. All the candidates lost their respective Democratic gubernatorial and congressional primaries in June, aside from Geiger, who serves as a state representative for the Rockland area.
Drop Site obtained private Maine Democratic Party information showing that the 500 delegates will be proportionally appointed based on 2024 election Democratic vote totals in their respective counties. How those 500 delegates will be elected is still under debate.
The tension between organizers and Maine Democratic party officials has grown as they determine a process to replace Platner. A former Platner staffer told Drop Site “all field and data” staff were moved onto MDP payroll before the rape allegations broke for “accounting purposes,” creating an awkward situation for the Platner organizers—who, like the volunteers, are unhappy with the MDP’s manuevers.
On July 8, Platner campaign organizing director Spencer Toth resigned from the MDP over its lack of engagement with volunteers and organizers in determining the replacement process. Drop Site obtained his resignation letter.
“Together, organizers and volunteers built something much bigger than one candidate. They built the largest grassroots operation in Maine’s history, a people powered movement rooted in working class politics and the belief that ordinary Mainers deserve a real voice in the future of the Democratic party,” Toth’s resignation letter says. “But yesterday, the Maine Democratic Party said the people who built this movement will “have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for US Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.”
The MDP Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson had accused the Platner team of “trying to tip the scales” by asking for transparency on the replacement process. “We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.”
“That work matters. It cannot be treated as disposable. The people who knocked thousands of doors, organized their communities, and built local teams across the state deserve transparency, respect, and a meaningful voice in what comes next.”
Toth concludes there is “no path forward to defeating Susan Collins without honoring and engaging the grassroots movement” the Platner campaign built across Maine. The future of the race should not be decided without the people who made the movement possible, Toth says.
“You deserve to have your voice heard and it is incumbent on each of you now to hold the Democratic Party accountable.”
Volunteers for Platner have broadly supported the nomination of Troy Jackson in place of Platner. On Friday morning, the Maine AFL-CIO also endorsed Jackson.
“We can pass Medicare for all, we can take on corporate power and the politicians in their pocket,” Jackson said in his Senate announcement video. “I’ve won in deep red Trump country and progressive cities like Portland and Bangor. His full senate policy platform is yet to be released.
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“We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.” Pretty arrogant dismissal of all the on the ground work done by all those volunteers. Leave it to the Democratic Party to undermine “We the People”. Don’t see how this statement by the MDP could be any worse.
What this moment makes plain is that the power in Maine didn’t vanish when Platner withdrew — it shifted. Fifteen thousand volunteers didn’t knock doors, build teams, and turn out record numbers because of a personality; they did it because of a platform. The Party can pretend that infrastructure is transferable, but the people who built it are telling them, clearly and publicly, that it isn’t. If the nominee wants the movement’s energy, they have to earn it by adopting the same commitments that produced the largest grassroots operation in state history. That isn’t a threat. It’s the reality of democratic organizing.