NEW YORK (AP) — Maine just sent a blunt message to the Democratic Party's national leaders.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills was forced to abandon her U.S. Senate campaign on Thursday, unable to generate sufficient fundraising or enthusiasm to compete against Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who has never served in elected office. The announcement marked a stinging defeat for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who recruited Mills to lead the party's
decades-long quest to defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
The swift defenestration of a two-term governor by a political neophyte highlighted a stark reality that has begun to take hold at a pivotal moment — Democratic voters are rejecting their party’s establishment and embracing new risks, even as their confidence grows that a blue wave is coming in November's midterm elections.
Sometimes Democrats seem almost as angry at their own party's aging and entrenched leadership as they are at President Donald Trump.
“Rank-and-file Democrats don’t want the Democratic Party as we know it,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the Democratic resistance group Indivisible. “Rank-and-file Democrats want fighters.”
Local Indivisible chapters, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who's an independent but caucuses with Democrats, and other leaders from the party's progressive wing had already lined up behind Platner, who is now almost certain to be the Democratic nominee in one of the party’s best Senate pickup opportunities in the nation.
Platner on Friday insisted he would continue to speak out against his party's leadership, including Schumer, although he acknowledged that the two spoke privately the night before.
“The fact that we’ve been able to do all of this without the help of the establishment, it puts us in such an amazing position,” Platner said on MS NOW's “Morning Joe.” “My criticisms of the party leadership, my criticisms of the party, they have not changed, and I’ve been very vocal about that since the beginning. But we will absolutely take the help that we can get.”
Republicans, meanwhile, are giddy — and some moderate Democratic strategists are worried — that the anti-establishment shift may undermine the party’s effort to claw back control of Congress in November.
“Chuck Schumer has officially lost the first battle in his proxy war with Bernie Sanders,” said Bernadette Breslin, spokesperson for the Senate Republicans' campaign arm. “As Sanders hits the campaign trail to prop up progressives in messy Democrat primaries in Michigan and Minnesota, Schumer’s chances of getting his preferred candidates through look grim.”
Maine is far from alone.
Prominent anti-establishment clashes are playing out in high-profile Senate races across Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa, along with House races in several states.
Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, continues to promote Platner and other critics of the Democratic Party's national leadership. The Vermont senator will campaign this weekend in Detroit with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is running in a three-way Senate primary against Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.
“There’s a desire to turn the page on the old guard,” Sanders' political adviser Faiz Shakir said. “It’s not even just the Democratic electorate. There’s a populist mood in this country. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”
Indeed, McMorrow is actively working to remind voters that she would not support Schumer as Democrats’ Senate leader if given the chance.
“Frankly, I was the first person in this country to say no,” McMorrow said in a video she posted Thursday on social media. “It is a different moment. This is no longer a Republican Party we’re dealing with, it is a MAGA party that has been taken over by Trump loyalists. ... You need to respond in a very different way.”
Veteran Democratic strategists like Lis Smith, who works with candidates across the country, tied the anti-establishment shift to the party's painful losses in 2024, when President Joe Biden was forced to abandon his reelection bid and Vice President Kamala Harris went on to lose to Trump.
“After 2024, voters are sick of the gerontocracy, sick of the status quo, and Chuck Schumer has completely misread that,” Smith said.
Privately, Schumer's allies downplay the impact of the anti-establishment backlash.
The Senate Democratic leader's preferred picks in North Carolina, Ohio and Alaska haven't faced the same challenges as Mills did in Maine. The four states represent the party's most likely path to a majority in the chamber, which has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats.
Mills is the oldest of the candidates and, at 78, would have been the oldest freshman senator in history. She promised to serve one term if elected. Platner is only 41.
Schumer's team is unwilling to make any apologies for backing Mills over Platner.
“Leader Schumer’s North Star is taking back the Senate," Schumer spokesperson Allison Biasotti said. "When no one thought a Senate majority was possible just a year ago, he made it a reality by recruiting great candidates across the country and laying out an agenda for lower costs and better lives for Americans.”
Some in the Democratic Party’s moderate wing are worried.
Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, said that Platner’s emergence in Maine “without a doubt” will make it harder for Democrats to defeat Collins in November. He warns that it could be the same elsewhere if Democratic primary voters rally behind anti-establishment candidates.
“Our message is if you would like to beat Donald Trump’s Republicans, you better nominate people who can win,” Bennett said.
