Maine voters head to polls on Tuesday for closely watched primary election

Voters in Maine head to the polls on Tuesday for one of the most closely watched primary elections in the country. The US Senate race has become a national fixation as Democrats try to unseat a longtime Republican with a political newcomer who has spent months under fire.

Graham Platner, 41, is set to advance as the Democratic nominee for the Senate, after his primary rival – the state’s two-term governor, Janet Mills – suspended her campaign in April. The primary result will likely set up a months-long run-up between Platner, an oysterman and marine veteran with a groundswell of popularity and a mounting list of scandals, and Susan Collins, a 73-year-old Republican senator who has held the seat for nearly three decades.

Democrats see Maine as one of their few real pickup opportunities in the fight for Senate control. Platner’s barnstorming run has drawn big crowds in rural towns and fueled a surge of in‑ and out‑of‑state donations. His populist message has tapped into a base fed up with Washington’s machinations. “Our tax dollars can build schools and hospitals in America instead of bombs to drop on them in Gaza and Iran,” he told supporters in Portland recently. He often leans on his combat experience – and the health care he says he receives from being “blown up enough times” – for his push to overhaul the system.

For her part, Collins last appeared on the ballot in 2020, winning a fifth term even as Joe Biden carried the state. She beat Democrat Sara Gideon by nine points despite trailing in polls. But this year many Republicans are being pressed on Donald Trump’s unpopular policies.

Collins has long walked a tightrope with the US president. She has defied him directly by voting for his second impeachment conviction and opposing Pete Hegseth’s defense secretary nomination. Yet she has also anchored some of the president’s biggest priorities – most notably her vote for Brett Kavanaugh, a move that ultimately helped enable the overturning of Roe v Wade. This midterm cycle, Democrats are hoping to frame Collins’ moderation as outright complicity with the Trump administration.

Platner holds a narrow lead over Collins in recent polling, which has tightened from a once-comfortable margin after his latest controversies.

The trouble started soon after he entered the race. Old Reddit posts containing racist, sexist and homophobic language resurfaced, which he attributed to PTSD from his military service. He then acknowledged covering up a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol.

The steady drip of scandal has continued.

Most recently Amy Gertner, Platner’s wife, confirmed he sent sexually explicit messages to several women while married. His campaign then had to respond to a report by the New York Times detailing abusive and “unsettling” behavior in previous relationships. This included allegations by a former partner, who is a Republican operative, that Platner twisted her arm behind her back and held her in a room. She also said that, despite claiming otherwise, Platner did know that his tattoo was a Nazi emblem. The likely nominee has firmly denied the allegations and called them “politically motivated”.

Addressing a crowd of hundreds of supporters in Bar Harbor on Friday, Platner presented himself as a man with an imperfect past who remains Democrats’ best hope of beating Collins. “When politically motivated, serious and false accusations are made against me, Maine, you have my back,” he said. “The state of Maine raised me and the state of Maine saved me.”

But the controversies have prompted hand-wringing among Democrats who in recent years backed the #MeToo movement and have been quick condemn Republicans facing claims of sexual misconduct.

Some lawmakers, including the senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and others who offered their full-throated endorsement of Platner earlier on, remain loyal. Ro Khanna, the US representative from California, described Platner’s conduct as “misogynistic” and “toxic” and said he should apologise but still rallied with the candidate on Friday.

Others raised doubts over Platner’s viability. Madeleine Dean, a US representative from Pennsylvania, said he “has disqualified himself” from the race, telling CNN: “It’s so distressing – all of the stories that are coming out, and there are more and more, it seems, by the hour.” Maggie Hassan, a senator from New Hampshire, told Punchbowl News that the accusations are “serious and deserve scrutiny”.

Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something, a progressive organization that recruits young candidates to run for office, acknowledged the dilemma. She wrote on Substack: “It fucking sucks to look at the facts as they are and conclude that even as we deserve so much more and better from our leaders, anyone who wants to flip the Senate has to hope he wins.

“Not because it doesn’t matter what he did or because character is optional – it matters, and it’s not. But the alternative if he loses is worse.”

Many Platner supporters in Maine remain unfazed. “I feel very confident in supporting him,” said Diane Bessey, who lives south of Portland. She and her husband voted early for Platner and argue Republican criticism is hypocritical. “He’s made mistakes, he’s apologized … you can’t point fingers if you voted for Donald Trump,” Bessey, 69, said.

But unaffiliated voters make up nearly a third of Maine’s electorate, and Platner will need to win over those focused less on ideology and more on what a senator can deliver. Before the Times report, Mills reminded voters her name remains on the ballot. “People have the impression that I withdrew,” she told the Lewiston Sun Journal. “I simply suspended active campaigning.”

But John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “I don’t know what to make of the call for Janet Mills to step up her campaign. She was not doing well. She wasn’t raising money and it wasn’t even a competitive race.”

Zogby added: “There’s a different atmosphere out there in terms of a willingness to excuse our guy and not the other guy. Under normal circumstances, Platner would have been gone but these haven’t been normal circumstances for a while.”

Platner’s most recent scandal has deepened concerns among Democratic voters who were already uneasy about his chances in November. Brenda Garrand, 68, cast an absentee ballot for Mills hoping others would do the same. If Platner becomes the nominee, she’s even considering voting for Collins – despite backing her opponent in 2020. “It makes me feel like a complete hypocrite, but that’s the way things go,” Garrand told the Guardian. “The ‘hold‑your‑nose vote’ may be for [Collins] among people who just can’t stomach Platner.”

Maine election law allows the nominee to withdraw their candidacy by 13 July, and for the party to pick a replacement by 27 July.

Further down the ballot, Maine’s second congressional district – a red dot in a state that has rejected Trump in the last three presidential elections – will be competitive for whichever Democrat emerges Tuesday. Jared Golden, the moderate Democrat who held the seat, announced last year he wouldn’t run again, citing “increasing incivility” and political violence.

A three‑way primary has formed between Jordan Wood, a former congressional staffer who briefly ran for Senate; state lawmaker Joe Baldacci, backed by the party establishment; and former secretary of state Matt Dunlap. Democrats hope to replace Golden with someone more aligned with the party on Capitol Hill. The nominee will face Paul LePage, the former governor backed by the Trump administration, who is running unopposed in his primary. Republicans see the district – which covers much of rural Maine – as a prime pickup.

Tuesday’s primaries will also set the gubernatorial contest. The crowded Democratic race includes Nirav Shah, former deputy director of the Maine CDC; secretary of state Shenna Bellows; former state Senate president Troy Jackson; former House speaker Hannah Pingree; and Angus King III, son of the state’s independent senator.

Republicans have a similarly competitive field. Polls show Bobby Charles, a former Reagan administration official, leading, with tech executive Jonathan Bush and businessman Ben Midgley trailing. The GOP hopes to end the Democratic trifecta in the Maine state legislature and governor’s mansion that the party has maintained since 2019.