Democrats Begin to Clash Over Who Replaces Platner Even Before He Exits

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The implosion of Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate in Maine after an accusation of rape has ripped open divisions inside the Democratic Party as its progressives and moderates battle to pick his successor even before he has said he will step aside.

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Mr. Platner said on a private call with his campaign staff on Monday evening that he believed he still had leverage to influence which candidate would replace him on the ticket, according to three people familiar with the conversation. On the call, he did not announce plans to withdraw but implied such a decision would be coming, the people said.

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Many on the left — including, it appears, Mr. Platner himself — want any replacement to come from the progressive wing of the party after he won the primary over Gov. Janet Mills, a moderate two-term Democrat, who withdrew over a month before the election.

“To the Democratic establishment: This is not your opening,” said Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution, a group that emerged from Mr. Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign.

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On the flip side, many in the party establishment believe those on the left should show some humility after Mr. Platner’s collapse.

A range of Democratic groups and activists engaged in the politics of I-told-you-so.

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Mr. Platner can be replaced as the Democratic nominee if he withdraws voluntarily by July 13. The state Democratic Party would then have until July 27 to pick his replacement, under state law. But the law does not dictate how the state party itself needs to pick Mr. Platner’s replacement.

What that would look like remains unclear. The options under discussion include a convention or a statewide caucus in late July.

A range of candidates are being discussed, with some early attention on those who ran and lost the primary for governor this year. Those Democrats include Troy Jackson, a former president of the Maine Senate; Nirav Shah, a former director of Maine’s public health agency; and Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state. But some Democrats were concerned about elevating someone who just lost.

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