The Brief: Two-and-a-Half-Week Race to Replace Graham Platner Begins

Maine Dems Piece Together Plan to Help Party Hold Senate Graham Platner is finally out. In a defiant statement last night, he once again denied the sexual assault allegations against him, but conceded what his allies had been telling him for days: it was time to leave the race. He called for an “open” and “democratic” process to replace him, Kate Riga reports. The Maine Democratic State Committee voted overwhelmingly to hold a 600-person nominating convention, according to the Portland Press Herald, which broke the news. MS NOW reported that, per one proposal discussed Wednesday, county committees would convene in the next few days to choose their delegates to the convention. The new candidate must be chosen by July 27 — 19 days from yesterday, when Platner dropped out. “We are of course going to require folks to talk to Maine voters in some way that is going to qualify them to be our U.S. Senate nominee beyond just declaring their intent,” Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson said in an MS NOW interview last night. “What that will most likely look like is petition collection from Maine Democratic voters across the state.” Former state Senate president and candidate for governor Troy Jackson is already running to replace Platner, as is Jordan Wood, who lost a congressional primary last month, and brewer Dan Kleban, who ran in the Senate primary before dropping out to endorse Mills. Shenna Belows and Nirav Shah, other also-rans in the Maine gubernatorial primary, are expected to enter the race soon. Hannah Pingree, Bellows, Jackson and Shah each got between 20 and 25% of the vote, but, after ranked choice results were tabulated, Pingree emerged as the winner. Actor Patrick Dempsey and historian-writer Heather Cox Richardson will not be running — just in case you were wondering. New U.S. Attorney Ready to ‘Destroy the Left’ While campaigning for Texas Attorney General last year, Aaron Reitz promised to use the job, should he win it, to “to destroy the left.” He came in last place. But now, through an unusual process, he’s reportedly become U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, a job that will imbue him with tremendous power to carry out the Trump administration’s retribution. - Bloomberg Law broke the news yesterday, writing that the district’s judges voted to appoint Reitz to the role, “according to a person familiar with the matter.” That means Reitz will not need to be confirmed by the Senate. - A veteran of Ken Paxton’s state attorney general office, Reitz briefly led the Trump DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy. He left that role to run in the race to replace Paxton; his old boss endorsed him, but he only got 14% of the vote. - During that race, the Texas Tribune reviewed some of his tweets to get a sense of his views. He mused that he was a part of “a civilizational battle with anti-American forces on the left.” He called Kwanzaa “ANTI-USA and ANTI-CHRISTIAN,” promising to “run out all Kwanzaa-aligned elements poisoning our state.” He wrote that “Islamism is incompatible with American civilization. … When I’m AG, I’m going to wage counter-jihad against them.” - Unfortunately, all this extreme rhetoric will put him right at home leading prosecutions for the Trump administration which, under NSPM-7, has made a priority of targeting groups on the left and others who, in the vague words of the White House directive, espouse “anti-Americanism, anti-Capitalism, and anti-Christianity.” Tabs - Last week, Trump rejected $227 million in disaster aid requests from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island as they repair from a major snowstorm earlier this year, Politico reports. - “Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) formally requested an update on Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) health on Wednesday amid the senator’s recent and ongoing hospitalization,” Emine Yücel reports for TPM. Man of the Hour It’s JD Vance, offering up this deeply confusing sentiment: “I ask you a very simple question: When you come to vote in November, are you gonna vote for the pro-fraud party? Are you gonna vote for the party that is sending your tax dollars to the fraudsters?” Surly there is one decent person in Maine without skeletons in their closet, personally I think they should start looking at women for that, maybe someone also named Susan Collins. s/ Aaron Reitz sounds like another sad, mediocre man who will continue to double down on performative hate to compensate for the absence of any interiority. Not looking forward to finding out what’s on his hard drive 5-10 years from now. Why no, JD, or whatever you call yourselves these days, I will not be voting for the party of Trump and his cultish klan of grifters, getting fat off of the nation’s sweat and tears. I am surprised you put the question out front and center like that. I’m loving this new column, TPM Please keep it coming They should be focusing as much firepower as they can muster on negative information about Susan Collins. If they don’t make her look like the worse choice regardless of who the D’s put up, then she’ll prevail yet again.