PORTLAND, Maine — As Maine Democrats rush to replace Graham Platner with a new Senate nominee, eight candidates gathered Thursday night for a debate that starkly showed the party’s challenge in unseating Sen. Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican.

The implosion of Platner, who dropped out days after being accused of rape, has left Maine Democrats choosing from a sparse buffet of candidates who either lost primaries for other offices this year or lack any traditional resume to run for the Senate.

The contenders are sprinting through a truncated primary process that will culminate July 25 with a nominating convention where roughly 600 party delegates will choose the nominee. The winner will plunge immediately into a race widely seen as crucial to the battle for control of Congress.

Onstage at a TV studio in Portland, all of the candidates were quick to highlight their anti-Trump bona fides and promoted a broad playbook of progressive policies to appeal to Democratic primary voters.

Here are some takeaways from the hastily arranged debate, where the candidates had to be split up into two groups because there were so many of them:

Maine Democrats Don’t Exactly Have a Deep Bench

The debate’s first hour included four leading candidates with something notable in common: They all recently lost Democratic primaries for higher office in the state.

Halting answers. Convoluted responses and stilted deliveries. Former state Sen. Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide, all struggled to match the forceful message and rhetorical prowess of Platner, whose rallies electrified voters over the last year.

Dr. Nirav Shah, the fourth candidate onstage — who, like Jackson and Bellows, ran and lost in the primary for governor this year — seemed to benefit from his experience as a top public health official at the federal level and in Maine. He was the face of the state’s coronavirus response.

On Thursday, he offered the clearest responses to the moderators’ questions. Even so, the moderators twice clarified his assertions related to Collins. In one instance, Shah suggested that she had been a rubber stamp for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — whose confirmation, a moderator noted, Collins had in fact opposed.

Shah also exhibited the most visible anger and emotion about the recent killing of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, who was shot to death by a federal immigration agent Monday in Biddeford, Maine.

“I’m angry that there’s a 3-year-old girl who’s never going to see her father again,” Shah said.

The Candidates Love Platner’s Policies but Not the Man

All of the candidates tried to thread a fine needle Thursday night: They wanted to embrace the grassroots energy that Platner captured and the policies he ran on, while not condoning the behavior that drove him from the race.

For Jackson, that meant celebrating Platner’s support for “Medicare for All” — a policy Jackson has long supported. Shah pointed approvingly to Platner’s long-stated desire to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Bellows, for her part, did not pick a policy. Instead, she said that Platner “energized a movement that’s always been there.”

The most pointed answer came from Wood, who ran against Platner before dropping out and entering a congressional primary in Maine, which he lost. During the Senate primary, Wood was reluctant to call the war Israel has waged in the Gaza Strip a genocide.

He described in some detail how his view on the use of that word to characterize Israel’s actions had shifted because of Platner.

“Graham got into this race saying, This is genocide, and I learned that it is so important in these moments to draw those moral lines,” Wood said.

Collins’ Voting Record Was a Target, and a Stumbling Block

The candidates took turns assailing Collins for siding with President Donald Trump on various issues, portraying her as out of touch with Democratic-leaning Maine.

But at times, her voting record seemed to trip up the Democrats.

Discussing Trump’s decision to order a military operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Bellows said, “What Susan Collins has failed to stop is a completely unstable foreign policy.”

Phil Hirschkorn, a moderator, said: “Collins did vote for a war powers resolution to limit what Trump could do in Venezuela in January, right?”

Bellows replied, “Forgive me.”

“A week ago, I was on vacation,” she explained, adding that after her run for governor, she did not expect to pivot to a run for Senate. “When I need to know the facts, I will. I’ll do my homework.”

Ice Took Center Stage

The fatal shooting in Biddeford has thrust immigration to the center of the race, and the candidates spent much of the debate denouncing ICE’s presence in Maine.

“How many more people must die at the hands of Donald Trump’s masked marauders before we finally agree that now is the time to abolish ICE?” Shah asked.

Bellows said the race was in large part about “getting ICE out of Maine.”

And Jackson said Collins “should have been able to stop ICE” as the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee.

Daylight Saving Time Was a Rare Point of Disagreement

Across an hour of debate, none of the four leading candidates tried to land a serious attack on each other.

Even slight disagreements on policy were few and far between. On immigration, healthcare and the economy, there appeared to be little daylight.

After Hirschkorn asked the candidates if they had any proposals to cut government spending, Bellows offered, “I would end the war in Iran.”

Jackson, next up, said, “Yeah, I mean, the war in Iran.”

As the moderators moved down the line, Shah and Wood widened their answers beyond Iran. But both pointed to what they said was wasteful spending on foreign affairs.

The leading four candidates did eventually find disagreement on one issue: Shah and Wood supported ending daylight saving time, while Jackson said he would preserve it.

Bellows said she was unsure.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Benjamin Oreskes and Tim Balk/Ryan David Brown
c. 2026 The New York Times Company