“As an adjudicated insurrectionist, Trump is an illegitimate president according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and therefore every official act as president will be illegitimate.”
–Mike Zonta, co-editor of OccupySF.net
The 14th Amendment states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Call your Congressperson and your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121
Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, pictured above, said Mayor Daniel Lurie, working with Supervisor Connie Chan, is delaying the proposal he hoped would be on the November ballot. Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle
San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood said Thursday that a major piece of his proposal to reduce food insecurity in the city has been jeopardized by political interference from Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Connie Chan.
Inspired by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to open publicly owned grocery stores, Mahmood last month proposed a pair of ballot measures that would seek to expand the number of affordable markets in San Francisco and dissuade stores from closing.
The first measure would create a city-run fund to convert corner stores into markets stocked with affordable produce and pantry items, while the second measure would tax large companies with vacant grocery store and pharmacy sites. The first measure could still move forward, but Mahmood was hoping his Board of Supervisors colleagues would send both measures to voters in November.
But Mahmood told the Chronicle that Chan, who chairs the board’s budget committee, informed him Thursday that she would not schedule a vote next week on the tax measure. Any delay could put the legislation at risk of not meeting the July deadline to make the November ballot.
Mahmood said Chan told him she was responding to a request from Lurie, who opposes the tax.
“It shows that she will exploit her power to block things through bad governance,” Mahmood said of Chan, who is running to succeed Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in Congress. “It’s also disrespectful from the mayor to intervene in board procedures.”
Chan’s legislative aide, Robyn Burke, told the Chronicle in a statement that Chan agrees with the intent of Mahmood’s measure but said it needs work.
“Much work needs to be done to this measure to deliver that intent,” Burke said. “Supervisor Mahmood has amendments he wants to make to his legislation that he is still working on. With that, she came to the conclusion that this measure was not ready to be agendized at this time.”
Lurie spokesperson Charles Lutvak did not comment on any discussions between Lurie and Chan but said in a statement that the mayor is trying to get more grocery stores in San Francisco.
“More taxes won’t achieve that,” Lutvak said. “We support the Affordable Grocery Fund and will continue working with Supervisor Mahmood and the entire Board to bring more grocery stores to the city.”
Mahmood has generally backed Lurie’s agenda, including acting as a key ally in the push to build more housing in the city.
Mahmood said Amazon, which has a shuttered Whole Foods store in the Mid-Market area, had been “actively lobbying” against his tax measure. The former Mid-Market Whole Foods spans nearly 65,000 square feet, meaning Amazon could face a tax of about $194,000 annually at the initial $3-per-square-foot rate. That would eventually rise to about $650,000 at the proposed $10 rate if the space remains vacant after three years.
Amazon lobbyist David Noyola did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.
Mahmood said he could have tried to send his proposed tax to voters by having three of his colleagues join him in placing the measure directly on the ballot. But Lurie is pushing a separate measure that would require at least six votes from supervisors to put any proposal on future ballots. Mahmood supports that idea and decided to follow it now in the spirit of good governance, he said.
“The insanity of this is that a private company can lobby City Hall, and then suddenly the progressive candidate for Congress (Chan) and the moderate mayor are both aligned in pulling a Mayor Mamdani-inspired progressive proposal that also elevates good governance,” Mahmood said. “I thought all of these cast of characters were progressive and for good governance, and this is neither of those.”
Mahmood expressed hope that Board President Rafael Mandelman might still use his authority to bring the tax measure before all supervisors in time for it to make the November ballot.
Mandelman did not immediately return a request for comment.
If that doesn’t happen, Mahmood said he will “have to reassess” the future of his grocery store proposals.
J.D. Morris covers San Francisco City Hall, focused on Mayor Daniel Lurie. He joined the Chronicle in 2018 to cover energy and spent three years writing mostly about PG&E and California wildfires.
Before coming to the Chronicle, he reported on local government for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, where he was among the journalists awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the 2017 North Bay wildfires.
He was previously the casino industry reporter for the Las Vegas Sun. Raised in Monterey County and Bakersfield, he has a bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from UC Berkeley.
Adalberto “Aldo” Toledo is a breaking news reporter with the Chronicle. He is a Venezuelan American from a family of longtime journalists. Before joining the Chronicle in 2023, he reported on Peninsula governments and breaking news for the San Jose Mercury News. He also has bylines in the Dallas Morning News, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Champaign, Illinois News-Gazette. Raised in Texas, he studied journalism with a print news focus at the University of North Texas Mayborn School of Journalism, where he worked as news editor for the North Texas Daily student newspaper.
San Francisco voters will decide this November whether the city should take the first step toward creating what could become the first city-run public bank in the nation.
Why it matters: Supporters say a public bank could help finance affordable housing, small businesses and green infrastructure — projects that often struggle to get affordable loans from traditional banks.
Driving the news: The Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 this week to place the measure on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Supervisors Alan Wong and Stephen Sherrill dissented.
How it works: The ballot measure would create a municipal finance corporation — essentially the governance framework for a future public bank, KQED reports.
The bank would be run by professional bankers, but with public oversight. The city attorney, controller, treasurer-tax collector, mayor and supervisors would have appointment power.
The proposal would prohibit lending to fossil fuel companies and weapons manufacturers.
Yes, but: The measure would not provide the money needed to launch the bank, which would require about $325 million in startup capital before it could begin issuing loans, Mission Local reports.
Backers have floated a tax on large financial institutions, philanthropic dollars or other public funding sources as potential options.
What they’re saying: District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, a longtime public bank advocate, said at this week’s meeting the proposal is about creating a financial institution “run by real bankers,” while still keeping it accountable to “public policy priorities,” per KQED.
The other side: Wong warned that running a financial institution requires discipline, transparency and banking expertise, adding the city is asking voters for trust “it has not yet earned.”
“Our city’s track record shows that meeting those demands is harder than it sounds, even for institutions designed with the right intentions,” he said.
What we’re watching: If voters approve the measure, the city would still need additional legislation and a funding plan before the bank could realistically open.
And that must be done before California’s law authorizing cities to create public banks expires in 2028.
By Tuesday, Troy Jackson formed an exploratory committee to signal his interest in running for Senate. Photo: ArenLeBrun, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Democrats in Maine and nationally are racing to find a new Senate nominee in the state’s crucial race after Graham Platner suspended his bid Wednesday night in the wake of a rape allegation that prompted his most prominent backers to abandon him.
Democrats will need to act quickly: Maine state law requires the party to identify a replacement by July 27. On Wednesday night, the party announced that a replacement would be chosen in a nominating convention, but did not give further details.
Choosing a new candidate will be politically thorny, with moderates and progressives jockeying for influence over who is selected. Democrats will also be newly wary about vetting after their tumultuous experience with Platner. The new nominee will have to ramp up quickly and raise money fast to take on Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican who has long dashed Democrats’ hopes of taking her seat.
Here are some of the potential candidates:
Troy Jackson, a progressive who served as the president of Maine’s state Senate from 2018 to 2024, is seen as aligned with Platner’s politics. Platner listed Jackson as his top pick for governor before the Democratic primary in June, in which Jackson came in third place. He is a logger from rural Aroostook County in northern Maine, and his father was a logger, too. By Tuesday, he had formed an exploratory committee to signal his interest in running for Senate.
A Democrat who campaigned as an outsider, Dr. Nirav Shah moved to Maine from the Midwest in 2019 to serve as Gov. Janet Mills’ health director. He led the state’s coronavirus response before becoming the principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023 and most recently working as a professor at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He ran for governor and led by 3 percentage points in the first round of the primary, but lost to the more progressive Hannah Pingree in the ranked-choice runoff. He said Tuesday that he was considering entering the Senate race.
Shenna Bellows, elected as Maine’s secretary of state in 2020, broke into the national news in 2023 when she fought to bar Donald Trump from Maine’s presidential primary ballot over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. A populist in Platner’s ideological mold, she often spoke on the campaign trail about her upbringing in a working-class family in rural Hancock County. She previously served as executive director of the ACLU of Maine and as a state senator, and won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2014 but lost in a landslide to Collins. She said Tuesday that she would “seriously consider” entering this year’s race.
A new pilot operating with health-care nonprofit Homebridge has been identifying patients who might benefit from follow-up care to prevent further visits
Agency expects a summer of large high-profile events to continue boosting activity as residents turn to transit for leisure, not work
Jordan Wood, a progressive who served as chief of staff to former Rep. Katie Porter of California, came in third in this year’s competitive Democratic primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. He ran on a promise to fight corruption in Washington, citing his work as a co-founder of a nonprofit group dedicated to opposing efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He briefly entered the Democratic primary for Senate in Maine before pivoting to the congressional race. On Tuesday, Wood said he was in “conversations” about reentering the Senate race.
Valli Geiger is a registered nurse and a former mayor of Rockland, Maine, who was elected to the state House in 2020. At a news conference this year, she defended Platner from criticism of his past remarks about women, saying he had undergone a personal transformation and pointing to his support for rape kit legislation, The Maine Wire reported. She is in conversations about potentially joining the race, she told The New York Times on Wednesday morning.
Paige Loud, a 29-year-old social worker, came in last in a four-way Democratic primary to replace Rep. Jared Golden in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she ran a progressive campaign focused on universal healthcare, free higher education and federal housing subsidies. She filed for Maine’s Senate race with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday afternoon.
Dan Kleban, a co-founder of the Maine Beer Co., a brewery based in Freeport, briefly ran in this year’s primary for Senate before withdrawing. He pointed to his company’s progressive workplace policies and dedication to environmental philanthropy, and spoke about starting the business after he was laid off during the Great Recession. On Wednesday, Kleban told readers of his Substack newsletter, “Do What’s Write,” that he would run to replace Platner.
David Costello, a Bangor native and environmental policy consultant, won 8% of the vote in the Democratic primary for Senate against Platner in June. Costello was a top official in Maryland’s Department of the Environment between 2011 and 2015, and unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, an independent, in 2024. On Wednesday, he announced that he would run if Platner withdrew.
Manny Yekutiel and presidential candidate Tom Steyer during Steyer’s appearance at Manny’s in San Francisco on Wednesday, July 17, 2019.Scott Strazzante/SF Chronicle via Getty Images
Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of alleged sexual assault. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-4673 in the U.S.
A prominent San Francisco activist and Mission District cafe owner is facing sexual assault allegations that have quickly eroded support for his campaign for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Manny Yekutiel, who owns the popular cafe and events venue named after himself on 16th Street in San Francisco, is accused of aggressively groping a local activist during a party at a home in 2020, the San Francisco Standard first reported. Brad Joseph Chapin, a nonprofit worker and former Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club board member, came forward with the allegations against Yekutiel and filed a police report in April.
In an interview with SFGATE, Chapin said he was at a party at a home in February 2020 when Yekutiel allegedly assaulted him. He also detailed the allegations in the police report filed in April and viewed by SFGATE on Monday.
Chapin told SFGATE that when he first saw Yekutiel sitting alone at the party, he didn’t immediately recognize him because Yekutiel looked like he “hadn’t slept in several days.” Chapin said Yekutiel then approached him and allegedly stuck his hand down Chapin’s pants, “forcibly” grabbing Chapin’s genitalia, causing intense pain and squeezing harder as Chapin tried to escape.
“Every time I tried to get away, he yanked and pulled and it was horrible,” Chapin told SFGATE. He said he only knew Yekutiel through mutual friends and was startled and frightened by the alleged assault, which he described as “violent.”
In a Monday Instagram video statement, Yekutiel denied the allegations, saying he was accused of “pretty terrible things.”
“One, whenever someone accuses someone of something like this, they deserve to be heard and taken seriously. … I felt really bad that he felt this way, and I would never want to cause pain or hurt to anyone,” Yekutiel said. “But the other thing I know to be true is that I didn’t do this to him. I have gone out, I’ve partied, and I’ve been part of the city’s queer nightlife scene, but I’ve always tried to respect people’s boundaries and treat people with respect as best as I can.”
Yekutiel also denied the allegations in a statement that Connor Skelly, a spokesperson for Yekutiel’s campaign for District 8 supervisor, shared with SFGATE last week.
“What is being described did not happen. When he reached out to me, I told him directly that it didn’t happen. He filed a police report, the police investigated and took no further action,” Yekutiel’s statement read. “They said they didn’t even need to interview me. His account has changed more than once since. And now, after more than six years, he’s raising it publicly for the first time, just as I’ve entered this race. There’s nothing here. I did not do this.”
SFGATE reached out multiple times to the San Francisco Police Department requesting further details about the police report and the investigation into Chapin’s allegations, including contacting multiple spokespeople and sending messages via phone and email. None of our inquiries yielded responses from either spokesperson Robert Rueca or spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky despite repeated messages to each specifically. According to a May 1 email from an SFPD investigator to Chapin that Chapin shared with SFGATE, the investigator was unable to “build enough [probable] cause to move forward with criminal charges.” The case “will remain open but be in an inactive status pending discovery of additional evidence,” the investigator wrote.
Chapin said he didn’t report the alleged assault for years because he feared no one would believe him and because Yekutiel was well known in San Francisco’s political circles.
“I was so scared that people wouldn’t believe me. I feel like 90% of the difficulty for coming forward about something like this, if there’s no video evidence of it, is that you’re gonna be accused of lying,” he said. “… It took everything in me not to say something, but also, I was so scared of the amount of power and influence he had, like his word against mine.”
Chapin’s breaking point, he said, was after he learned that Yekutiel is one of four candidates running in the November election for supervisor of District 8, an area that includes the Castro, Noe Valley, Diamond Heights, Mission Dolores and Cole Valley. (The incumbent supervisor, Rafael Mandelman, is unable to run for reelection due to term limits.) When Yekutiel announced his candidacy in September, Chapin said he “shut down.”
“I could barely talk, unable to function, like I barely got out of bed, except for the things I needed to for a couple of weeks,” he said. “… If I didn’t come forward, like, I would just be sitting worried.”
Ivy Lee, the director of the Mayor’s Office for Victims’ Rights, told the SF Standard that she spoke with Chapin and encouraged him to come forward with the report. She told the outlet the claims appeared to be credible and said she disagreed with Yekutiel’s criticism of the timing of Chapin’s allegations. Lee did not respond to SFGATE’s repeated requests for comment.
According to the SF Standard’s report, Lee also called Yekutiel’s response a “tired and predictable playbook for alleged perpetrators,” saying that they “blame the victim, shame the victim” and deny allegations.
Chapin pushed back on the implication that his allegations could be politically motivated.
“This has nothing to do with his politics, and if it wasn’t for this happening, for all I know, I could have been supporting him,” Chapin said. “… There’s no way on earth that I would subject myself to this amount of humiliation and embarrassment if it wasn’t true.”
Yet in his Monday statement, Yekutiel again suggested the accusations are related to his campaign.
“I do think that what’s happening here is an attempt to assassinate my character,” he said. “I was told at the beginning of this that politics in our city could get pretty nasty. And I definitely know that that’s true. And I see that now.”
Yekutiel has been a close ally of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, even before Lurie was elected to the San Francisco office. Yekutiel and Lurie co-founded a nonprofit initiative in 2023 called the Civic Joy Fund, CBS Bay Area previously reported, which is a program created to help clean and revitalize the city’s streets post-pandemic.
On July 2, Lurie told the SF Standard that he has “no plans” to endorse a candidate for the District 8 supervisorial seat.
Yekutiel’s cafe, Manny’s, has also become a center for civic gatherings, such as election watch parties and keynote speeches. However, the recent allegations have caused some people to withdraw from their appearances at Manny’s and rescind their endorsements for his campaign.
Jason Galisatus, a spokesperson for state Senate candidate Christine Pelosi (daughter of House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi), told SFGATE that Pelosi withdrew from an event at Yekutiel’s San Francisco cafe because of the allegations but did not provide further comment. According to the SF Standard, Rudy Gonzalez, San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council secretary-treasurer, also withdrew from the event for the same reason.
The offices of Rep. Lateefah Simon, who represents the East Bay, Attorney General Rob Bonta and District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar all confirmed to SFGATE that they have pulled their endorsements of Yekutiel.
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“I was not previously aware of the sexual assault allegations against Manny Yekutiel. It is incredibly important that victims in any situation have the ability to come forward and are supported after,” Simon said in a statement shared with SFGATE. “Following this news, I have since retracted my endorsement.”
Chapin said his main hope is that people ultimately believe his account and that people who have experienced sexual assault feel more comfortable coming forward in the future.
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“What does justice look like for me has nothing to do with Manny,” he said. “What justice looks like for me is just to genuinely be believed.”
Madilynne Medina is a news reporter for SFGATE. Born and raised in the Bay Area, she earned a B.S. in journalism from San Jose State, where she served as executive editor for the Spartan Daily, and has also worked at NBC Bay Area. When she’s not out in the field reporting, she’s likely trying a new workout or listening to The Weeknd. You can contact her at madilynne.medina@sfgate.com.
Three major contenders for the Maine Democratic Senate nomination, including Nirav Shah, far left, Troy Jackson, second from left, and Shenna Bellows, right, took part in a gubernatorial debate in April. Credit: Screenshot/WMTW News 8
There had been an uneasy expectation in Maine political circles that something else was going to drop with Graham Platner. After this week’s rape allegation, his swift downfall is not surprising. The harbormaster of Sullivan has joined the sad and mostly male parade of American politicians who operate under the conceit that their past transgressions will never outpace them.
But eventually, on Wednesday night, Platner stepped aside. And the question now turns to who will replace him, through a statewide convention in a couple of weeks, as the Prospect has reported.
Maine is a very small state when it comes to politics: The political players all know each other well. Unless there are the darkest secrets among the major contenders, the skeletons in those closets have already smashed to the floor. The knowns are known.
The politician who can generate the same kind of excitement that the charismatic Platner did doesn’t exist in Maine. His candidacy had already fueled infighting between progressives enthused by the new entrant and allies of Gov. Janet Mills. That competition has no winner in the conventional sense and will complicate the campaign over the next few months—if not completely blow it up. Which means that the next candidate must have the skill set to squelch the Democratic civil war and wage the uphill battle of defeating Susan Collins.
All three meet the first prerequisite for a candidacy under least-best circumstance: statewide name recognition.
One entrant, Maine state Rep. Valli Geiger (D-Rockland) says she has Platner’s backing, a dubious honor for the Mid-Coast Mainer given his deep tarnish. (The Platner campaign has a different story.) Another person with traction is Maine Beer Company co-founder Dan Kleban. He dropped out of the Senate race early on. “I’ve spent years talking to Mainers over a beer in our taproom and throughout the community … I’m ready to fight for Mainers and bring a new generation of leadership to Washington,” he said in a Wednesday afternoon statement. Jordan Wood, a former House staffer and third-place finisher in the Second Congressional District, is reportedly interested, but like Geiger lacks a statewide profile.
The major contenders competing for the Senate slot, therefore, boil down to three former Democratic candidates for governor. There’s Troy Jackson, the former state Senate president; Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state; and Dr. Nirav Shah, former head of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who directed the state’s COVID-19 response.
All of them meet the first prerequisite for a candidacy under least-best circumstance: statewide name recognition boosted by their primary campaigns for governor. The question is whether a deflated, angry voter and volunteer base can be invigorated by one of them to defeat a senator who should be on a course to retirement.
The Jackson campaign’s “Draft Troy” movement is well under way. The former Senate president from the tiny hamlet of Allagash, population 237, in Aroostook County in the North Maine Woods, is a logger on his fifth pacemaker who never had health insurance until he served in the legislature. He had been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders for governor—and now by Sanders’s Our Revolution group for the Senate. He’s the most Platner-esque of the trio, and has been serving up robust critiques of “the system” that makes life difficult to impossible for working Mainers for decades. (He has said that he would not want Platner’s endorsement.)
His top campaign planks rested on confronting the housing crisis, lowering child care costs, and restoring tribal sovereignty to the state’s Wabanaki Nations.
I interviewed the sharp, plain-speaking Jackson in the Before Times, when he won his state Senate seat by a slim three percentage points in 2016. After the presidential election, he told me why Donald Trump won.
On trade: “Donald Trump understood that so many people feel like they are losing what they have in life because of bad trade deals and things like that. I flat-out don’t believe that he will do anything to help in that regard. But he made it a huge issue. He was very adamant that he was going to change those trade deals.”
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On the far right: “What the far-right has done so well is that they have convinced people that, when they are struggling, don’t ever look up at where the problem actually is, keep your eyes down on those less fortunate. It’s not the guy who gets $40 million in some type of government program that didn’t do shit to produce any jobs. It is not the people on Wall Street that completely screw up the economy that we had to bail out. It’s those bums down there who are getting $500, $600 a month on TANF. Get rid of them and your life is going to be better.”
Of the five major Democratic candidates for governor, Jackson, Bellows, and the eventual winner Hannah Pingree—the former Speaker of the Maine House—formed a pact all agreeing to rank each other. Maine uses ranked-choice voting for many of its elections.
In the legislature, Jackson had the reputation as a difficult colleague, with a fair share of failures to communicate with other lawmakers and the governor’s office. Some allies of Mills have categorically dismissed his run for governor, exhibiting more than a hint of snobbery toward the sharp, plain-speaking Mainer. Given the tenor of the times on Capitol Hill, he might fit right in.
Bellows has tussled with Collins before. After stepping down as executive director of the ACLU of Maine, she was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, running against Collins in 2014. The senator rolled over her in a landslide. She rebounded after a stint in the Maine Senate, becoming secretary of state in 2021.
Bellows has emerged as a solid defender against multiple Trump administration threats. The secretary of state shrugged off the Justice Department’s latest voting lawsuit, demanding the state’s “complete and unredacted” voter rolls. The U.S. District Court in Maine dismissed the case in May. The Justice Department’s most recent lawsuit centers on the secretary of state’s refusal to provide undercover license plates to ICE and other Homeland Security agencies. “We don’t have secret police in a democracy,” Bellows said in a statement, “and covert civil immigration enforcement is not something Maine will facilitate. If the DOJ wants to sue us over that, we’ll see them in court.”
In her campaign for governor, Bellows evoked Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, a Mainer and the first woman cabinet member in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration. She called for “A New Deal for Our Economy” that would “lower property taxes on primary residences, cut utility costs, boost our housing supply, and provide opportunities for new businesses and entrepreneurship. And we’ll pay for it by making the wealthy pay their fair share.”
She grew up in Hancock, north of Bar Harbor, in a family that did not have electricity and indoor plumbing until she was in the fifth grade.
Whether Shah, who would be the ultimate outsider candidate, can make inroads over the clamoring for Jackson or Bellows remains to be seen. He did secure the most first-choice votes in the first round of ranked-choice voting in the governor’s race, amid heavy spending on advertising.
Shah earned very high marks for his stewardship of the state’s COVID-19 response and has struck all the right notes on Medicare for All. However, he’s also a transplant born and raised in Wisconsin with only seven years in Maine, a tough résumé in a state that measures Maine-ness in generations, not years.
A flash poll that the Platner campaign inexplicably conducted this week found that Jackson held a 49-44 lead on Collins, with Bellows and Shah up on Collins by an identical 47-45 count. Mills and Wood tested far behind the Republican incumbent.
Whether any of these candidates or some sleeper pick can stand up to the ruthless gentility of the Susan Collins machine is the quandary that the state party leaders must quickly figure out. Maine Democrats need a unifier who can heal the wounds gouged by the Platner fiasco. If the new candidate can keep the spotlight on Susan Collins’s deficiencies, Democrats are well placed to make a stand. If the Democratic Party’s machinations and the deficiencies of their new standard-bearer take over the headlines in the weeks ahead, it’s going to be a very long winter in Maine.
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Gabrielle Gurley is a senior editor at The American Prospect. She covers states and cities, focusing on economic development and infrastructure, elections, and climate. She wins awards, too, most recently picking up a 2024 NABJ award for coverage of Baltimore and a 2021 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication urban journalism award for her feature story on the pandemic public transit crisis. More by Gabrielle Gurley
Residents fill out their Maine primary ballots, June 9, 2026, in Belfast, Maine. Credit: Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo
UPDATE: The Maine Democratic State Committee has voted for a 600-person nominating convention, not a statewide caucus, as the method to select a replacement nominee for Graham Platner. Five hundred of the delegates will come proportionally from Maine’s counties, and then include the 100 state committee members.
While a statewide caucus was previously seen by my sources as a likely outcome, the state committee went in a different direction on Wednesday night. I apologize for what was ultimately incorrect information.
This could easily torch whatever remaining goodwill exists between the party and supporters brought into Platner’s campaign, and brings back all of the unsavoriness associated with perceived backroom dealing. There is no real way to make a 600-person convention representative, and accusations of insiderism will proliferate. It also appears to conflict with the party’s stated goals for an inclusive process where supporters can participate, unless by “participate” they meant “watch online.”
It is unclear whether the nominating convention will follow the Maine standard for all statewide primary races and use ranked-choice voting.
The decision damages hopes for reconciliation and potentially affects Platner’s decision to withdraw from the race.
My original story, based on sourcing that proved incorrect, below:
Despite much shouting and allegations on all sides, the Maine Democratic Party is moving toward finalizing a statewide caucus to select a replacement for Graham Platner in the U.S. Senate race, the Prospect has learned.
Platner would initiate this process by withdrawing from the nomination that he won last month, something that has also been heavily rumored to happen at any time.
State rules surrounding party nomination vacancies set a deadline for replacement on the ballot by July 27, but the party itself is not bound by a specific process. A state committee must hold a meeting and make a decision, but the committee could adopt the wishes of the voters as their selection.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson said on Wednesday that the party is developing “a representative, transparent and inclusive process to select a new nominee,” and added that Platner supporters “are a vital part of our Party and deserve to participate in an open process to select [his] replacement.” That statement was buried in between a good deal of invective over the past two days about Platner trying to “manipulate this process” and vowing that he will “have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process will look like.”
Spencer Toth, organizing director of the party, resigned on Wednesday over the latter remark, saying that “the future of this race and this Party should not be decided without the people who made [Platner’s] movement possible.”
A party spokesperson did not respond to questions from the Prospect.
Some supporters of Platner have definitively expressed their preference for replacing him with “a progressive fighter.” The Platner campaign has more obliquely talked about how its supporters “deserve to have a real role in any nomination process.” Campaign manager Ben Chin sent supporters a survey Wednesday to give their thoughts to the party and Platner. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The demand to not turn over a replacement nominee to an opaque committee of insiders does seem to have yielded a result.
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The timeline is incredibly tight, but a statewide caucus could be held as late as the weekend of July 25-26 and still be completed in time for the deadline. Several candidates have already formed exploratory committees to run, including three people who ran for Maine’s open governor’s seat last month: former state senator Troy Jackson, health official Nirav Shah, and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Dan Kleban, a local craft brewery owner who was briefly in the Senate race, has also announced, along with Jordan Wood, who lost the primary for U.S. House in Maine’s Second Congressional District, and state representative Valli Geiger.
Those candidates and potentially others would be voted on in the statewide caucus, the details of which have not been fully determined. Maine Democrats select convention delegates through a statewide caucus, and therefore have some experience with putting on such a process.
The party has not detailed who would be eligible for a caucus, though the expectation is that it would be open to Maine Democrats. In recent years, caucuses in presidential primaries have been criticized for not allowing absentee ballots and reducing voter turnout. But with a little more than two weeks to assemble, and with the state not interested in putting on a traditional election, a caucus is the only real solution to give voters a chance to have a say in the next nominee.
One rather dangerous idea floated has been to use a web-based technology the party employed during COVID to select state committee members. Cybersecurity experts have repeatedly warned against online voting as wholly unreliable.
This was not an inevitable outcome. Initially, Maine party leaders were talking about a second convention, using delegates selected in February to choose a committee that would decide the nomination. But that was seen as too close to a backroom deal and too reminiscent of the 2024 anointing of Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee after the primaries concluded and Joe Biden said he would not seek a second term.
Supporters see a caucus as the only outcome that can keep the fragile coalition of Mainers wanting to defeat Susan Collins together, and if leveraged properly by the candidates and the eventual nominee, it could even make it more likely that Collins is defeated. The focus would be on organizing and building on momentum that led to record turnout last month, even as Platner faced only token opposition after Gov. Janet Mills dropped out.
It’s not yet clear under what terms the lead-up to the caucuses will be undertaken. Because this is a party-run affair, Democrats could, for example, disqualify any candidate who runs television ads or has a super PAC running ads on their behalf.
The ability to come together has been marred by jockeying from both sides. The Platner camp intimated that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was on the ground working with the state Democrats on selecting the nominee, something a spokesperson from the DSCC characterized as false. “The Maine Democratic Party has made it clear that they are working to put forth an open process to select a nominee,” the spokesperson said.
The party, however, had not released the details of that process, and as of Tuesday were saying that they would not release such details until Platner withdrew. The statement on Wednesday said they were “developing” the process, and while it nudged toward something allowing voters to choose the candidate, that had not been publicly confirmed.
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David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90. More by David Dayen
The solution is hiding in plain view.It was one of those steam-bath D.C. days where your shoes start to sweat. I was behind my desk reading Marx’s The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and wondering why he had to rewrite the thing 17 times, when she slinked into the office. She’d clearly gone to the Lauren Bacall School of Slink, but her eyes were wild with alarm. “Sit down,” I began, “and tell me all about it.” “It’s the pundits,” she husked, huskily. “They’re all over the map when they try to explain why there are so many”—she paused here to collect her thought—“socialists.” “They say some foreign power is paying them,” she continued, pulling out a Wall Street Journal op-ed from her lip gloss bag. “They say they were seduced by Marxist professors. They say this is what happens when we let billionaires get taxed or Lee Greenwood doesn’t get a lifetime Grammy.” “Pfoo,” I replied. I walked to my bookcase, picked out Werner Sombart’s 1906 tome Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? and gently threw it at her. “Check out Sombart,” I said. “In America, he said, socialism runs aground on the reefs of roast beef and apple pie.” “He was a vegetarian?” she asked. “No,” I replied. “He said American mass prosperity—relative to Europe’s, anyway—negated the need for socialism. But he didn’t address what would happen if broadly shared prosperity up and left.” “Where did it go?” she asked. “It got a super-luxe first-class ticket,” I answered. “Wealth and income and political power climbed their way up to the very top of the totem pole. What your precious pundits don’t seem to remember is that the number of American socialists and communists ballooned during the Depression. We’ve been here before, babe.” “As much as now?” she asked. “No, again. So long as they ran on third-party tickets, they couldn’t win squat. And the commies only started picking up members when Stalin told them to make nice with Roosevelt. In 1934, they’d called him a fascist. In 1936, when Uncle Joe changed his mind, FDR became the commies’ superhero. Real good commies had this thing for amnesia. Helped to forget what you’d said a couple months earlier.” “Then this guy Harrington—this was in the ’70s—said that the commies had been smart to go to work with unions and the Democrats, but they should have been open about who they were. That’s what socialists should do, he said. Third-party candidacies had their place, but that place usually wasn’t America. And when Bernie Sanders and AOC and this Zohran character validated that, it gave socialists some running room. They could grow.”
“So socialism surged when Mike Harrington was saying this?” she asked. “Well, no,” I responded. “I was a member of DSOC and DSA when they formed in the ’70s and early ’80s. But we hadn’t gone plutocratic yet. The banks hadn’t taken over the economy then, the big boys weren’t offshoring our smelters and our shoes yet, rich people still were paying taxes, there were barely any billionaires …” “No billionaires,” she gasped. “How can there be an America without billionaires?” “Believe it, babe. And we were happier then. So DSOC and DSA chugged along with just a handful of members. There were still lefty kids and some oldsters who could sing Spanish Civil War songs, but they didn’t register that capitalism was beginning to be let out of its cage and money would begin trickling upward. Then zooming upward.” “Socialism is catching on now,” I continued, “because Americans can see that capitalism just isn’t working for them. There’s a poll in today’s Wall Street Journal that shows that a majority of Americans say capitalism isn’t working well. That’s up from about a third a decade ago. When an -ism isn’t cutting it, people may conclude it’s time for a different -ism.” “But why socialism?” she squeaked. “Why not Rosicrucianism,” I came back with. “Because socialists aren’t afraid to tax billionaires to provide affordable child care. Because Rosicrucianism and Theosophism are still formulating their position on that.” “So it’s not foreign powers?” she queried. “It’s not Marxist critical studies professors?” “Moscow gold is gone,” I said. “Marxist critical studies professors we shall always have with us, but they’ve been around since the ’70s with no real-world effect until Lehman went blooey and only the rich really got bailed out.” “I think I get it,” she said, getting up and making for the door. “Gotta run.” “Hey,” I posited. “You free tonight?” She made the kind of face I make when eating my Aunt Freida’s goulash. “Well, how about I stay on the case for you?” I countered. “My retainer is just 50 bucks …” “Retainer?” she asked with studied incredulity. “Are you kidding? Like I can do 50 smackers?” “But …” I began. “Forget it, Mr. Historically Accurate Economic Determinist,” she spat out, slamming the door. “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Political ambition can change people, fast. Matt Haney was part of the city’s left until he decided that being a moderate Yimby would get him elected to the state Assembly. David Chiu ran for supervisor as a progressive backed by Aaron Peskin, then quickly changed sides when he needed moderate votes to become Board president.
And now, let me present Alan Wong.
Wong was an aide to Sup. Gordon Mar, one of the most left-leaning members of the board during his term. He supported David Campos over Haney for state Assembly and Honey Mahogany over Matt Dorsey for D6 supe.
From the left to the right in just two years: The sad story of political ambition is far too common in SF
Wong ran as a progressive for City College Board, with the endorsement of the unions and the other left-leaning board members. In 2024, the Bay Guardian noted:
The only progressive on the board seeking re-election is Alan Wong—and unlike the 2022 election, there are no other progressive candidates. Since the election is at-large, meaning the top four win, we are endorsing only Wong, in the hope that he gets enough votes to finish in the running.
Then the D4 supervisor seat opened up, and Mayor Daniel Lurie was looking, after a terrible mistake, for a credible candidate who could hold office—and support his conservative agenda.
Wong took the job, and has sided with the most conservative flank of the board, over and over, most recently on the public bank.
I just looked at the answers Wong gave to the Harvey Milk Club in 2024. You can see his questionnaire here.
Among the questions: Do you support a public municipal bank? Answer: Yes.
Wong also told the progressive club that he opposes the use of Tasers by cops, opposes qualified immunity for police officers, and supports reparations for Black people. He said he supports an independent investigation of all police shootings and would not accept contributions from law-enforcement unions. He also supported supervised injection sites, and replacing PG&E with a municipal utility.
Most of those positions are directly in conflict with what the mayor wants (although Lurie hasn’t taken a position on PG&E). It’s pretty clear that we will not see Wong adhere to what he told the Milk club just two years ago.
I asked Wong why he changed his position on the public bank. He hasn’t responded. (We used to talk fairly regularly; since he joined the board, he hasn’t responded once to my calls and texts). His staff hasn’t responded either.
But look who supported his re-election: The entire conservative establishment that just two years ago he was running against—including Dorsey and the Police Officers Association, which has pushed for Tasers and opposed independent investigations of all police shootings.
It’s just sad, really, how quickly a lifetime’s worth of political positions can evaporate when a political promotion comes along.
48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.
New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) hold a rally in Union Square marking the start of a campaign to tax the rich and win universal childcare on November 16, 2025.
(Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The swing voters who will decide the midterms are not asking Democrats to sound more like Republicans—they want Democrats to embrace progressive economic policies that will actually work to lower costs.”
Democratic strategists have long clashed over whether the path to victory runs through “moderation” or bold progressive ideas, and a new analysis of 2026 swing voters boosts arguments for the latter, revealing the top policies that would sway them to vote Democrat include raising taxes on the wealthy and establishing a Medicare for All-type universal healthcare system.
On Thursday, Data for Progress published a new report identifying a relatively small but electorally crucial bloc comprising roughly 8% of likely 2026 voters who are genuinely persuadable heading into the November midterms. These swing voters, many of whom voted for President Donald Trump in 2024, identify as moderates or independents rather than conservatives, consume relatively little political news, and are primarily focused on one issue above all else: the cost of living.
“A plurality of swing voters aren’t sure which party they trust on the major issues, but Democrats hold a slight advantage on inflation and the cost of living, the top issue for swing voters,” Data for Progress found. “Around 1 in 3 swing voters say their biggest issues with the Democratic Party are its ‘old and out of touch’ leadership and the party ‘not doing enough to lower costs.’”
“The most popular proposal was simple: Raise taxes on the wealthy,” the report states. “Twenty-eight percent selected it as one of their top three choices. Close behind, at 24%, was creating a Medicare for All healthcare system. Those weren’t followed by tougher immigration policies or deficit reduction. Instead, voters also favored banning artificial intelligence from setting prices or wages based on personal data and preventing utility companies from passing unreasonable costs on to consumers.”
According to the report, swing voters currently favor a Democratic candidate for Congress over a Republican by a 12-point margin, with 46% undecided.
“The swing voters who will decide the midterms are not asking Democrats to sound more like Republicans—they want Democrats to embrace progressive economic policies that will actually work to lower costs and put workers first,” Data for Progress executive director Ryan O’Donnell said on Thursday. “Voters have been making clear for years that cost-of-living issues are the top priority. Taking more conservative stances is not what voters are asking for from their leaders right now.”
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Harold Meyerson
