The first of the two times I wrote about Graham Platner at these pages was last year, in a story entitled “Politicians Aren’t Heroes.” Among other things, it made the point that candidates are vessels for ideas and policies, and that none of them are indispensable.

The second time, a week ago, was about how financial corruption exists on a different plane than other scandals. That is not diminished by the latest news; Platner’s actions and Susan Collins’s corruption can both be inexcusable and described as such.

Regardless of any public defiance from unnamed sources, Platner is not going to survive the latest allegations, and he should not. What comes next is the only thing that matters now, in a world where a Democratic Senate is vital to preventing continued unchecked lawlessness, the confirmation of dozens more right-wing judges, and to preserve the vestiges of democracy.

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When Platner drops out, Maine Democrats will have a narrow window to find a new candidate by July 27, three weeks from today. According to the bylaws, the party need only hold a meeting, figure out the rules for a replacement, and then make a choice. There is nothing specific beyond that.

Reporting indicates that Maine Democrats are thinking about holding a state convention to choose a new candidate. The convention would nominate delegates, who would make that selection.

This would be better than a simple announcement by the state’s party committee, which has officially been ruled out. Democrats caucused to select party delegates back in February, so there’s a patina of legitimacy. And the process of selecting the decision-makers would at least be public and transparent. But there’s a whiff of insider-ism here that is likely to toxify the process.

If Maine can hold a caucus to select delegates, they can hold a caucus to select a nominee. They have a couple of weeks to assemble it. Maine just had its statewide primary and the likely candidates to substitute for Platner are well known. A primary election overseen by political parties rather than governmental election officials is known as a firehouse primary. This is Maine; let’s have a lighthouse primary.

You can already hear, before Platner has even officially withdrawn, rumblings about who “deserves” the nomination. Some base it on who best represents similar ideas expressed by Platner, like Troy Jackson, a logger from the northern Aroostook County who served two terms in the state Senate and finished third in the gubernatorial primary. Some look at who got the most first-place votes in that gubernatorial primary: Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention during the COVID-19 pandemic, and acting director of the federal CDC at the end of the Biden presidency.

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Some might say that Gov. Janet Mills, who placed second to Platner in the Senate race with about one-fifth of the vote despite having dropped out of the race, should be the nominee. (Most observers doubt that she’s under consideration.) Or people could claim that Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, two also-rans in Maine’s Second Congressional District primary (Jordan Wood and Joe Baldacci), or even current Second District officeholder Jared Golden should get a shot.

The realities of modern Democratic politics make it likely that any decision will be savaged by at least some as establishment scheming. To be clear, in my view Maine Democrats are likely just trying to stand up who they consider their best nominee at this point. But to maximize that chance of victory, how they select the nominee matters. There’s a way to do it that’s transparent, in the spirit of primaries to which American voters are accustomed, and actually somewhat cleansing of what has been an enervating process. The best way to legitimize the result is to open it to the people.

It would be a difficult undertaking to do it in time for the July 27 deadline, but it’s not impossible. The Senate race is high-profile among local Democrats, who were energized enough to vote in record numbers in June. As the party runs caucuses for delegates, they have the potential to pull this off in similarly grassroots fashion. If the party needs money to do so, I’m sure the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has an interest in a strong candidate.

One thing this would force is the kind of campaign everyone purports to want in America: a short window focused on person-to-person contact rather than throwing millions of dollars on the air. The party is running the caucus, and they could force each candidate to forswear any television advertising in the next couple of weeks as a condition of eligibility.

The result would have the best claim on reflecting the will of Mainers as they head into the general election. Not inferring from Platner’s performance or what happened in unrelated primaries, but a real result. And it could create something unique and important. The winner would need dedicated statewide organizers, a strategy that will help in November. Having the state dominated by a contest for Senate for the next few weeks could create momentum. And it would blow the events of the past 24 hours off the front page.

This also avoids the obvious uneasiness of a Democratic Party apparatus choosing a nominee after the primary, as was done with Kamala Harris in 2024. There is nothing positive about that scenario right now other than convenience.

Platner needs to affirmatively withdraw to set this in motion. The only way to follow through on the ideas he claimed to support for the better part of a year is by getting the hell out. As Maine Democratic gubernatorial nominee Hannah Pingree said today, “Platner tapped into something real—voters hungry for change showed up with real passion and energy. That energy doesn’t have to go away.” A lighthouse primary is the best way to keep it going.

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