It had been a full month since Graham Platner’s U.S. Senate bid imploded, but in August, Lee Lehto was still wearing his “Oyster Thugs” campaign tee — bearing the name Mr. Platner’s fans adopted after President Trump used the label for the oyster-farming candidate nearly a dozen times.
A high school English teacher and artist, Ms. Lehto, 74, lives in Mr. Platner’s birthplace of Blue Hill. She was among the most devoted of the volunteers who helped him win the primary. But once Mr. Platner dropped out, after he was accused of sexual assault, Troy Jackson, the former state lawmaker who replaced him, desperately needed the help of people like her to beat Susan Collins, the five-term Republican incumbent.
Ms. Lehto has been a tough sell, and she is not alone. No one knows exactly how many others are as disappointed as Ms. Lehto, but the volunteers who ardently supported Mr. Platner numbered some 15,000.
Her reluctance reflects the challenges for Democrats as they navigate between the passions of their left wing and the power of the establishment. Democrats now fear that if enough of those volunteers vote for Mr. Jackson but refuse to join in any get-out-the-vote operation, that obstinacy could cost the party a seat it has coveted for three decades.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in more than 20 years studying politics,” said Mark D. Brewer, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Maine. “Platner had this rabid, almost cult following, and he built it overnight.” Those followers’ anger and apathy, he added, “could hurt Jackson, and if too many people stay on the sidelines, that could be a real problem.”
In late June, days before Mr. Platner dropped out on July 8, he was leading Ms. Collins by two points, according to a New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll. Since then, the race has shifted. In a late September Time/Siena poll, Ms. Collins held a slim three-point lead, amid a belief among voters that Ms. Collins would do a better job delivering federal resources to Maine. Ms. Collins led Mr. Jackson by roughly 30 percentage points among white working-class voters, who constitute most of the Maine electorate. More recent polling suggests the race has tightened in the final weeks.
Yes, Ms. Lehto is upset and confused by the “really bad story” that brought Mr. Platner down, and wishes he had not left the race. But it wasn’t only about him. She is livid, she said, at a Democratic Party that for years has pushed handpicked candidates, taking her vote for granted while failing her family.
Her devotion has puzzled some friends and family. She kept her Platner lawn signs up for so long in her yard that her younger son bristled at her loyalty, asking, “What kind of feminist are you?”
Ms. Lehto supported Mr. Jackson’s platform but feared that his campaign operation would be another top-down Democratic Party operation, not the grass-roots insurgency of Mr. Platner that energized volunteers like her.
“I don’t think the national party has any idea who we are, and they don’t really care,” she said in August, still smoldering.
“I’m out. I will not work for the Democrats.”
A Cancer Diagnosis
Ms. Lehto’s journey toward Mr. Platner began in 1998, when the elder of her two sons, then 14, was diagnosed with bone cancer. Massachusetts General Hospital, a leading facility for treating such cancers, was just 240 miles south in Boston. But the struggle to pay spurred a major shift in the family’s life.
She and her husband, a painter, applied for Maine’s version of Medicaid, which covered children but not parents. The couple went without health insurance for part of the four years of her son’s treatment. Their son made a full recovery, but the need for continuous coverage partly prompted Ms. Lehto, at age 50, to borrow money to go back to school. She earned a master’s degree and secured a teaching job with solid health insurance.
Her family’s ordeal focused her on universal health care. Medicare for all is supported by 60 percent of likely voters in Maine, according to the September New York Times/Siena poll.
Ms. Lehto first met Mr. Platner in the summer of 2025, when he spoke at a house party in Blue Hill. She had known his mother for decades, and she liked what she heard.
“He was so clear on universal health care,” Ms. Lehto said. “I was like, ‘OK, I don’t care what else he does or says — I’m in.’”
Ms. Lehto went on to lead a team of 30 volunteers who knocked on hundreds of doors in Maine’s Second District, which includes cantankerous unaffiliated voters and Republicans. Mr. Platner’s gruff charisma, work on the water and struggles after military service in Iraq and Afghanistan resonated in a state where one-third of voters refuse to declare themselves a member of either party.
The campaign’s door-knocking philosophy, Ms. Lehto said, was to listen more than talk: “Don’t argue, just ask them what their issues are and why they hate you, if that’s where it’s going.”
When disturbing early details emerged about Mr. Platner, including allegations of sexual misconduct, most supporters stuck by him. Many said they did so because he owned up to the problems, attributed some of them to combat-induced trauma and said he was getting help. Others said they did not want to let national Democrats drive out a candidate who wanted universal health care.
“A lot about his personality was triggering for some women, who were like, ‘I know men like that,’” Ms. Lehto acknowledged. She did not argue with them, except to say, “Then don’t vote for him.”
Mr. Platner won the primary with 72 percent of the vote. Less than a month later, his former girlfriend publicly accused him of sexually assaulting her during a drunken visit to her home in 2021. He denied it.
Ms. Lehto found the allegations “devastating, but not shocking, knowing his story.”
After Mr. Platner dropped out in July and the state party chose Mr. Jackson as the new nominee, Ms. Lehto intended to vote for Mr. Jackson. But she would not work for him because of her anger at the national party, she told friends.
Then she ran into Mr. Platner shucking oysters at a Blue Hill gourmet grocery while his wife, Amy Gertner, swiped customers’ credit cards. Ms. Lehto told the couple she did not like the way the party had silenced Mr. Platner.
“Graham has no more words,” Ms. Lehto recalled Ms. Gertner telling her. “He is out of words, and he won’t have any more words until Nov. 4.” The couple had moved on.
In these last days before the election, Ms. Lehto has moved on, too.
She joined the Maine People Powered Movement, a group composed of Platner supporters who, like her, wanted to help Jackson but were put off by the national party. “I wouldn’t be doing anything if it weren’t for this organization,” she said.
She is knocking on doors for Mr. Jackson in Blue Hill with the group.
In the end, she said her desire to protect others from the health insurance nightmare her family endured had prevailed. Mr. Jackson supports Medicare for all.
“I’m hopeful,” she said of the race. “But it’s nail-bitingly close.”
Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting from Washington.
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