Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, is a former U.S. senator and representative. He served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 2022 to 2024.
Maine Democrats went to the polls Tuesday and chose their nominee. Now they need to do something harder. Democratic leaders need to back incumbent Republican Susan Collins — and Maine’s Democratic voters should vote for her.
I say this as a Republican who has spent the past several years arguing that my own party should place a higher premium on character, even at the cost of losing a race or two in the short term.
In 2017, when Sen. Jeff Sessions joined President Donald Trump’s cabinet, Alabama Republicans nominated Roy Moore, who was credibly accused of pursuing teenage girls. When this information surfaced, many of my Republican colleagues in the Senate withdrew their endorsements. I went further and wrote a campaign check to Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones.
In the end, Alabama sent a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in a generation — and Republicans survived to fight another day. The seat returned to Republican hands when Jones was defeated by Tommy Tuberville just three years later. More important, the GOP did the right thing.
Maine Democrats now face a similar choice.
On paper, Graham Platner is a compelling figure: Marine veteran, oysterman, political outsider, economic populist. He has energy and grassroots support. But the accumulating record of his personal conduct — the sexting while married, the reported behavior toward women he dated, the controversial comments that keep surfacing — raises serious questions about judgment and character that don’t disappear because the issues are important or because a Republican senator is the alternative.
Democrats seem to be telling themselves what Republicans initially told themselves about Moore: Yes, but the stakes are too high. Yes, but the other side is worse. Yes, but we really need this seat. They are not wrong that every Senate seat matters. They are not wrong to want a stronger legislative check on the Trump administration. They are just wrong to think that these things matter more than character.
There is other precedent for voting across the aisle. In 1991, when David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, advanced in a jungle primary for governor of Louisiana, leading Republicans didn’t hold their noses and support him. President George H.W. Bush and prominent Republican senators crossed party lines to back Democrat Edwin Edwards, a man with considerable ethical baggage of his own but nothing comparable to Duke’s odious views. (Bumper stickers even urged Republicans “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important.”) The Republicans understood that some choices are about more than partisanship. They chose country over party.
Some Senate Democrats are saying voters care more about housing and health care than about Platner’s personal life. They say that Democrats need to win the seat to have any chance of securing a Senate majority and the power to block extreme Trump appointments to the judiciary and executive branch. Maybe. But those are also arguments that cause parties, over time, to rationalize away their standards until they have none left.
I believe that voters in Maine know that they can do better. I think they will do the right thing and reject Platner’s candidacy in November. The question is, will Democratic leaders help by encouraging voters to cross the aisle?
Democrats have built their coalition on a premise that women’s voices matter and that character in public life is not optional. Those are excellent values to base a political movement on. Here is a chance to prove they mean it.
Both parties are stronger when they hold themselves to a standard. This is not idealism. It’s how democratic institutions survive.
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