With Mills out, Maine Democratic convention is colored in shades of Platner

PORTLAND — Graham Platner couldn’t be found at the Maine Democratic State Convention until minutes before his speech Saturday evening. 

It had been three days since the Sullivan oyster farmer became the party’s presumptive nominee to challenge five-term Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins this fall.

Yet though he wasn’t there in person for most of the day, his aura loomed large.

Platner buttons were ubiquitous. Attendees described their feelings on the convention and their feelings on Platner often as one and the same — excited.

Between bites of vanilla-cake batter gelato, State House District 138 candidate Oliver McAvoy of Limington characterized Platner as an archetype.

“I’m less of a Pelosi-Schumer Democrat and more of a Bernie-Platner Democrat,” McAvoy said. 

MaryBeth Davidson, 71, a delegate from Windham, is an impassioned fan of Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her primary bid against Platner Thursday as her campaign circled the drain, both financially and in the polls.

On women’s issues, healthcare, climate change — Davidson is behind the governor entirely. 

But in the Senate race? 

“She was not a great candidate,” Davidson relented.

Platner has baggage — offensive social media posts and a now-covered tattoo of a Nazi-linked symbol (He has said he didn’t know what that tattoo meant until weeks before the news broke last year). 

Davidson doesn’t love that. 

“But he’s saying everything I want to hear,” she said. 

In the corner of the convention venue, someone used the campaign’s “Un-schuck the system” stickers to suspend a print copy of a New York Times opinion essay extolling Platner’s irreverent anti-war rhetoric, the way a restaurant might frame a glowing review.

For many Maine Democrats, the Platner-Mills race was the lone divisive matchup on a ballot of otherwise congenial opponents. 

“People, in general, have been happy to have that settled,” said Kathleen Meade, 77, a delegate from Freeport.

Nirav Shah, one of five gubernatorial candidates in a crowded Democratic primary, talked to voters sporting a still-factory creased “Neat” T-shirt  — a subtle anti-ICE statement. Platner is known to wear a hoodie with the same graphic. 

Mills’ exit doesn’t change the day-to-day routine of campaigning, Shah said, but it likely means the governor’s race gets a larger share of the spotlight. 

Primary elections are ranked choice, meaning voters can select multiple preferred candidates in sequential order. If no one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, then the last-place finisher is eliminated and the second choice votes of that candidate’s supporters are reallocated to the remaining candidates until someone secures a majority. 

The system has fostered an uncommon degree of camaraderie among some of the Democratic candidates. 

In speeches Saturday night, candidates running for the nomination in Maine’s second congressional district took aim not at one another, but exclusively at presumptive Republican nominee and former two-term Gov. Paul LePage.

The Democrats hugged and exchanged pleasantries off stage.

“Of course, each of us wants to be ranked No. 1, but if we’re not somebody’s No. 1, we want to be their No. 2,” Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Shenna Bellows said last month as she and two other Democrats accepted an equal and unconventional three-way endorsement from the Sierra Club of Maine.

Delegates can usually rattle off two, maybe three gubernatorial candidates they like. A lapel button doesn’t necessarily indicate a certain vote come June 9. 

“All of them are so qualified,” said Ritchie Dow, 77, of Cumberland. 

The glut of worthy gubernatorial candidates is saccharine for some Democrats. But Mills had soured things for them.

In her last major ad blitz in mid-March, Mills went after Platner over his unsavory social media comments.  

“It didn’t tell anybody what she wanted to do going forward,” said Karen Parker, 63 of Hartland.

Her husband of 30 years, Henry Parker, 60, is an insulator at Bath Iron Works who sports a Yankees tattoo on his right forearm and a Pat Patriot on his left. 

“I do think Graham Platner’s got the energy, man,” he said.

By early evening, the Portland Hearts of Pine were winning on the big screen. Rows of seated delegates were bathed in the blue of overhead lights.

Candidates for each of Maine’s congressional districts rehearsed their speeches in the wings. Gubernatorial candidates mingled by their booths.

Meade, the delegate from Freeport, handed out Platner signs to her friends in the third row, although the nominee-to-be still had yet to appear.

He arrived about a minute before David Costello, the Brunswick Democrat who remains in the Senate race, took the stage.

After Costello made his pitch, Platner took the stage before an ebullient crowd and grinned.

In a gracious nod to his former opponent — and an extended hand to her die-hard supporters — Platner then thanked Mills for her years of service.

His speech, in typical form, invoked “we” more than “I.”

It’s been “they,” the powerful, who have taken from Mainers, Platner said, invoking the working class-versus-wealthy paradigm his campaign so often leans on.

“But they don’t know Maine,” he roared, his voice at times strained.

He spoke for over 11 minutes — more than twice the allotted time, and minutes longer than any other candidate.

Last weekend, Sen. Collins was played on and off her party’s convention stage to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “American Girl.”

When Platner concluded, the audience filtered outside to another Petty hit: “I Won’t Back Down.”