When Graham Platner dropped out of Maine’s Senate race, Democrats figured they’d dodged a bullet. All they had to do was find a competent replacement to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and the seat was theirs for the taking. That was the narrative, anyway.
Then their candidates took the stage Thursday night for the first primary debate, and the bullet found them anyway.
The debate, hosted by News Center Maine on July 16, featured four candidates in the first hour: former State Senate President Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former congressional aide Jordan Wood, and Dr. Nirav Shah, all of whom lost separate Democrat primaries for higher office in Maine earlier this year. This is the B team.
Don’t take my word for it.
The New York Times, which would love nothing more than to watch Collins lose, reviewed the performance. “Halting answers. Convoluted responses and stilted deliveries,” was its verdict. “Former State Senator Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide, all struggled to match the forceful message and rhetorical prowess of Mr. Platner, whose rallies electrified voters over the last year.”
When even the New York Times can’t spin a Democrat debate into a triumph, you know it was ugly.
The low point belonged to Bellows. The candidates spent the night attacking Collins for supposedly rubber-stamping President Donald Trump’s agenda, and her actual voting record kept getting in the way. Discussing the military operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Bellows claimed, “What Susan Collins has failed to stop is a completely unstable foreign policy.”
“Collins did vote for a war powers resolution to limit what Trump could do in Venezuela in January, right?” moderator Phil Hirschkorn asked.
“Forgive me,” Bellows said. She explained that she had been on vacation a week earlier and hadn’t expected to run for Senate at all after losing her bid for governor. “When I need to know the facts, I will,” she added. “I’ll do my homework.”
Think about that for a second. A sitting secretary of state, running for the United States Senate, promised voters she would get around to learning the facts at some point down the road.
Hellbound and Down 