00:00Joining us now to talk about next steps ahead of this crucial Senate race is Bloomberg's Boston
00:04Bureau Chief Brooke Sutherland. Brooke, thank you so much for coming to join us.
00:08I do want to ask, it seems like some of these things should have been or frankly were discoverable
00:13before they decided to run him as a candidate. I want to play you some sound from some campaign
00:18advisors who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. Did the vetting process turn up the tattoo that
00:25became so controversial? No. The Reddit posts, did that turn up in the vetting process?
00:39The firm sent us a thing and it had some of the posts, but it didn't have all of them.
00:47And what did you think about that? How did you think your way through the fact that he had posted
00:54these things on social media? I said none of this will or should stop him from becoming a U.S.
01:00senator. So that was Plattner strategist Daniel Maraf saying, you know, this is they hired a firm
01:06to vet the candidate as they do. And it seems like after that excruciatingly long pause, some of this
01:11stuff was known. Is it clear what they knew, what they didn't know, and why they decided to make the
01:15decision to go ahead and put him forward as a candidate? I think all of those details are still
01:20coming to light. That's certainly a lot of frustration on the part of Democrats. I mean,
01:24I think what's important to remember here is just how crucial this race is. Its import carries well
01:31beyond Maine. Democrats need a net gain of four seats in order to retake the Senate. Susan Collins
01:37was widely considered the most vulnerable incumbent because President Donald Trump lost Maine in 2024.
01:44Kamala Harris won the state by seven points. There's a lot of anti-Trump sentiment in the state of
01:50Maine. This seemed to be one that was reachable in reach. And instead, you're seeing this sort of
01:55last minute scramble to come up with somebody who does not have all of this baggage. And so I think
02:01there's a frustration that we're at this point. You talked about it initially. We only have until
02:05July 27th. The Maine Democratic Party is trying to put on a convention with a lot of different moving
02:12parts. This is going to be sort of an unprecedented effort to try to figure this out. And so I
02:17think,
02:17you know, to be in this position, to be in this last minute scramble in a race that was so
02:21important
02:22really does raise a lot of those questions about why was this betting not done earlier? Why was it
02:27not more thorough? Why were there not more focused interviews with the candidate himself? I also think
02:33there's a lot of frustration on the part of Democrats with how Plattner himself has handled this,
02:38sort of repeatedly insisting that as each scandal came out, that there was nothing more that could be
02:43unearthed. And as we saw, that was certainly not the case. Yeah, there's this running joke on Capitol
02:47Hill. Susan Collins is concerned. It's her, you know, whenever she talks about legislation. While
02:51I'm very concerned, I feel like, frankly, Democrats at this point are the ones who are a bit concerned.
02:56Susan Collins is probably quite happy that the focus has kind of shifted off of her as a result of
02:59all of this. But, Brooke, as I look at the letter that Graham Plattner sent to the Department of
03:04Secretary of State in Maine, he notes people are desperate for change in that state, that he was
03:09somebody who advocated for a new kind of politics, and over 156,000 people voted for that. As you cast
03:15your eyes northward from your perch in Boston and look at this kind of scramble, as you described it,
03:19this movement among Democrats to find candidates to run for this seat here at the 11th hour,
03:25what unifies them? Are there candidates who have that same kind of anti-establishment verve that
03:30really elevated Plattner to the top of that initial primary? Sure. And I don't think the issue is
03:35finding people who want to raise their hand. I think it's sort of narrowing down the field. We
03:40have at least eight candidates who've sort of raised their hand of wanting to be interested
03:45in this position. And so I think finding a consensus among Maine voters in such a short
03:51period of time with the way that they're going about approaching this convention is really going
03:55to be the challenge. You had the Maine Democratic Party announcing late last night the process for
04:00how this convention would work. Each county chair is going to be hosting a nominating meeting where
04:06all registered Democrats can cast their vote for who they want their delegates to be in their
04:10respective counties. And then you're going to have the convention on July 25th. And the first candidate
04:17to achieve a majority is going to be the winner, but they're going to keep voting until they find a
04:22candidate who does get a majority. And it's important to remember that a number of these candidates
04:26actually ran and lost in the Maine governor's race. And that race was particularly close. You had
04:31pretty much every candidate sort of in that 20 percent range. And it was so close that the top
04:37vote getter actually did not win the race because you then went on to rank choice voting and you had
04:41alliance between three of the other members that sort of elevated them above Nirav Shah, who was the
04:47former CDC head in Maine during the pandemic. So the candidates are really all over the spectrum.
04:52You have a lot of them trying to grab this progressive mantle that, as you said, Graham
04:57Plattner really carried. And, you know, that that is what voters voted for. And so you're seeing a lot
05:03of these candidates really focusing on that messaging. Now, none of them really have the charisma
05:09that Graham Plattner had, but sort of the most obvious progressive follow on candidate would be
05:14former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, who was endorsed in the governor race by Bernie Sanders,
05:20lost that race. He's one of the candidates that lost that governor race. And he was also Graham
05:24Plattner's top pick in that governor race. As you look at the big names that are possible to fill
05:31the seat, first of all, who is getting to choose who gets the final say? Does Plattner get to have
05:35any say in picking his replacement or is he just kind of PNG at this point out of the out
05:39of the
05:39discussion? Do you think some of that anti-establishment populist Democrat verve will be successful the
05:47second time around? Or do you think there's going to be a bit of a retreat from that? And voters
05:50may
05:50say, let's go with someone a little bit more predictable. Sure. So he will not have a say in
05:56who the replacement is. That was a point of contention. That's one reason why this dragged
06:02on for as long as it did. And we didn't see Graham Plattner officially quit the race until late
06:07yesterday. But the way that they're going about this is instead a convention-based approach. And I really
06:13think they're trying to do that to avoid a repeat of what happened with Joe Biden when he stepped
06:18aside and there was sort of, you know, a sense of a backdoor choosing of who the replacement was
06:24going to be versus a proper democratic process of picking a replacement. And so they're really
06:30trying to avoid that. They're bending over backwards to try to make this as clear and transparent as
06:34possible as one can possibly do under such a short deadline. Now, in terms of, you know, what these
06:41ultimate candidates, what sort of methods they will represent, I think the jury is still out
06:46because, you know, a number of these delegates, it's not clear if they will be the type of people
06:51that voted for Graham Plattner or if they might be sort of more your moderate, you know, older main
06:57type voter. And so I think that it's really sort of an open debate over what this delegate is going
07:03to look like that's going to show up at the convention and participate in this nominating convention.
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