Auburn resident, Steven Doyle, right, talks with Maine Congressional candidate, Jordan Wood on June 9 outside the polling place at the Auburn Community Senior Center. (Russ Dillingham/Staff Photographer)

LEWISTON — Jordan Wood wants Maine Democrats to remember that he called for Graham Platner to end his Senate run last year, when early scandals about the rising star emerged.

But Wood also doesn’t want Platner’s former fervent supporters to forget that, after Wood ended his own Senate campaign to run for Congress in the 2nd District, he ultimately endorsed Platner as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Wood, a 36-year-old Lewiston native and former Capitol Hill staffer, is back in the pivotal Senate race he first entered in April 2025. His rollercoaster election cycle, and his subtle pitch for picking up the Democratic nomination from a candidate who galvanized progressives before withdrawing in disgrace, typify the field of contenders in the truncated process underway to replace Platner.

Democratic Senate candidate Jordan Wood addresses reporters at a news conference on July 13 in Lewiston (Ethan Wolin/Staff Writer)

His singular year in the Maine political spotlight also sets him apart, Wood argued at a small press conference on Monday.

“How is our candidate going to have the moral clarity and earn the trust of voters that they are independent of the campaign of Graham Platner?” Wood said Democrats should ask, speaking to reporters in an art gallery in downtown Lewiston. “This is something that I uniquely have the ability to do.”

Last October, Wood said in a statement that Platner’s inflammatory Reddit comments and chest tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol were “disqualifying.” The following month, after U.S. Rep. Jared Golden announced his retirement from Congress, Wood switched to the Democratic primary to succeed him.

In an interview after the news conference Monday, Wood said he “paid a price” politically for his statement against Platner at the time, while other Democrats tolerated the charismatic Marine veteran’s checkered history.

Now, he said, he expects that Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican seeking her sixth term, and her allies will try to tie her eventual Democratic opponent to Platner’s controversies.

“I’m the one that can say truthfully, like, ‘I saw the red flags,’” Wood said.

Even while touting his distance from Platner’s Senate campaign, Wood also stressed his agreement with Platner’s progressive platform, and said he counted Platner and his wife as friends.

After Wood lost the 2nd District Democratic primary to State Auditor Matt Dunlap, who had just rallied with Platner, Platner was among the first people to call, Wood said. Yet he suggested that his poor primary performance in Platner’s own Hancock County, which is also Dunlap’s home, resulted in part from some voters’ “lingering resentment” about his October call for Platner to bow out.

During his remarks to the media, Wood cast blame on out-of-state political strategists who recruited Platner to run for Senate. Wood said they failed to warn him adequately about the relentless attacks he could face for any episode from his past.

Every candidate seeking to replace Platner as the Democratic Senate nominee has had to contend with the political toxicity of his fall. Platner left the race following a rape allegation that he denies. But those seeking to succeed him also hope to harness the power of the movement that culminated in Platner’s overwhelming primary victory over Gov. Janet Mills.

The contenders must collect hundreds of signatures from Maine Democrats to qualify for the nominating process. County meetings this weekend will produce delegates for a convention in Bangor the following weekend, according to the Maine Democratic Party’s plans.

Besides Wood, the most prominent candidates all lost the gubernatorial primary to Hannah Pingree. They are Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state; Troy Jackson, the former state Senate president; and Nirav Shah, the former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Each of them was running a statewide campaign until little over a month ago.

But Wood said he stands out as someone who had already been running for a federal office in this election cycle. Bellows, Jackson and Shah had “absolutely no interest in running for the U.S. Senate against Susan Collins” when they instead decided to run for governor last year, he said. 

He added that he had spent considerable time and forged relationships with Democrats in the 1st District — where he lived, in Bristol, before switching into the 2nd District contest last year.