Hannah Pingree won Maine's Democratic gubernatorial primary on June 9, defeating a crowded field that included Troy Jackson, the candidate most closely tied to embattled U.S. Senate hopeful Graham Platner. The result strips Platner of a powerful potential ally in the governor's mansion as he tries to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins while fending off misconduct allegations and questions about a tattoo with Nazi origins.
Pingree, a former speaker of the Maine House, prevailed through the state's ranked-choice voting system over Jackson, former Biden public health official Nirav Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and other challengers. Shah drew the most first-choice votes initially but lost ground as lower-ranked preferences were tallied, a dynamic shaped in part by a late-May alliance among three of his rivals.
For Platner, the outcome is a clear setback. He and Jackson had campaigned together repeatedly, appeared side by side at a Bar Harbor rally the Friday after the primary, and shared a stage with Sen. Bernie Sanders at a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour stop at the Collins Center for the Arts on the University of Maine campus in Orono on May 24. Sanders endorsed both men. Now the populist wing of Maine's Democratic Party has lost its bid for the governorship, and Platner heads into a general election without the institutional lift a friendly governor's race would have provided.
Maine's ranked-choice system lets voters list candidates in order of preference. When no one wins a majority of first-choice votes, the weakest finishers are eliminated and their supporters' ballots are redistributed according to their next-ranked picks. The process continues until a candidate crosses the threshold.
Shah, the epidemiologist who spearheaded Maine's COVID-19 response under Gov. Janet Mills, entered the primary as a top contender. He had served as principal deputy director of the CDC and before that ran the Illinois Department of Public Health from 2015 to 2019. But his ties to Maine were described as minimal before Mills tapped him to lead the state's own CDC branch.
In late May, Pingree, Jackson, and Bellows held a joint press conference, reported by Maine Public Radio, in which all three urged their supporters to rank each other highly. The maneuver appeared designed to blunt Shah's momentum. Pingree framed the trio as battle-tested public servants.
"I think we're the three people in this race who have voted time and time again on behalf of Maine people, on behalf of working people, on behalf of universal healthcare, on behalf of the environment, on behalf of more housing for Maine people. I think you can trust the three of us to get the job done."
The strategy worked, for Pingree. Jackson and Bellows were eliminated in earlier rounds, and their supporters' second- and third-choice rankings lifted Pingree past Shah. Jackson, the economic populist and former state Senate president who once earned a 100% rating from Maine Right to Life, saw an unnamed outside spending group backing Shah run negative ads highlighting his earlier opposition to abortion rights.
That Jackson needed the ranked-choice coalition at all tells you something about where the Democratic electorate stood. And that Pingree, not Jackson, was the ultimate beneficiary tells you even more.
Platner faces allegations of abuse in past relationships with women and unresolved questions about whether he was aware of a tattoo with Nazi origins that he later covered up. At the Bar Harbor rally on Friday, he dismissed what he called "politically motivated, serious and false, false accusations."
The controversy has divided Democrats nationally. Sen. John Fetterman broke with his own party over Platner's candidacy, and a senior House Democrat publicly rejected Platner's denials about the tattoo, saying the candidate had to know its meaning.
Meanwhile, prominent Democratic women who built political brands on the #MeToo movement have been conspicuously quiet. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dodged questions about the abuse allegations, a silence that sits uneasily beside years of insisting that women must be believed.
Platner told supporters he ranked Jackson first, then Pingree and Bellows, on his own gubernatorial ballot. That Jackson lost despite Platner's active campaigning underscores the limits of the Sanders-aligned populist lane in a state where Democrats hold nearly all statewide offices but chose an establishment-backed nominee endorsed by the outgoing governor.
Gov. Mills, 78 and term-limited, had initially launched her own Senate campaign against Collins. She suspended that bid in April after struggling to raise money and falling behind in polls, a retreat that raised pointed questions about Chuck Schumer's recruitment strategy in a state Democrats need if they hope to retake the Senate.
Mills then endorsed Pingree for governor. The endorsement carried weight. Pingree's victory reinforces the Mills wing of the party at the state level, but it does nothing to solve the party's federal-level headache: a Senate nominee dogged by personal scandals who has yet to demonstrate he can survive a general election against a well-known incumbent like Collins.
The Cook Political Report rates the Maine gubernatorial contest as "likely Democrat." On the Republican side, Bobby Charles, a former Bush administration official, won a six-candidate primary that included Jonathan Bush, a businessman and cousin of former President George W. Bush.
In her victory statement Friday morning, Pingree struck a unifying tone, thanking competitors and voters alike.
"After a year-long campaign and a careful count, the results are in. I'm grateful, I'm ready and there is no time to waste. I've spent nearly 25 years serving the people of Maine and the last year really brought home what that service is about, because Mainers show up for each other, in cities and towns, and they never give up on their neighbors."
Notably absent from her remarks: any mention of Graham Platner or the Senate race.
The gubernatorial result matters beyond Augusta. Platner's strategy depended on running alongside a like-minded governor who could energize the populist base Sanders helped build. Without Jackson at the top of the ticket, Platner loses that synergy. He now shares a ballot with a nominee from the party's establishment wing, a wing that has shown little appetite for defending him against the misconduct allegations that continue to shadow his campaign.
Legal observers have noted that Maine Democrats may have a procedural mechanism to replace a nominee on the ballot. Whether party leaders exercise that option depends on how much longer they're willing to carry Platner's baggage into a race they once believed was winnable.
Hannah Pingree is the daughter of Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, a detail that underlines just how small and interconnected the state's Democratic power structure really is. That structure chose continuity over populism on June 9. Whether it chooses to cut loose its troubled Senate candidate before November remains the bigger question.
Maine Democrats picked the safe choice for governor. The riskier bet, the one that could cost them a Senate seat, is still on the ballot.
