Former Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah said his broad statewide support makes him the strongest Democratic candidate to take on Sen. Susan Collins after the abrupt exit of Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner from the race.
Speaking with CNN’s John Berman, Shah outlined his strategy ahead of the Maine Democratic convention on July 25, where roughly 600 delegates will choose the party’s nominee following Platner’s withdrawal from the contest.
At least eight Democrats have entered the race since Platner ended his campaign, setting up an unusual nomination process that will be decided by convention rather than a primary.
“Our plan is to do and harness the energy that we created in the gubernatorial campaign and now transfer that over to the Senate campaign,” Shah said, referring to his 2026 gubernatorial bid.
Shah said his campaign is encouraging supporters to become convention delegates while continuing grassroots outreach across the state.
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“What we are really working on right now is helping folks who are supporters of our campaign make sure they know how to participate and become delegates so that they too can have a hand in choosing the next nominee,” he said. He added that his campaign had recently held two town halls and gathered the signatures required to qualify for the ballot.
During the interview, Berman questioned whether Shah’s performance in Maine’s ranked-choice gubernatorial primary suggested he lacked broad coalition support. Although Shah led in first-choice votes on election night, he ultimately lost to Hannah Pingree after ranked-choice tabulations.
Shah rejected that characterization, arguing that the initial results better reflected enthusiasm among Democratic voters.
“What the data show is that we had broad and intense support across the state of Maine,” he said, noting that he led the first-choice vote in both congressional districts and won the largest share of votes in 211 of Maine’s roughly 460 municipalities.
Shah argued that Democrats need a nominee capable of attracting support across the state to defeat Collins, who has consistently drawn crossover votes from Democrats during her three decades in the Senate.
“The way in which Senator Collins has been able to win for 30 years is not just because she secures Republican votes,” Shah said. “She is successful in peeling off every single election a certain percentage of Democrats who crossover and vote for her.”
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He said the Democratic Party needs a candidate with both broad appeal and enthusiastic supporters.
“This is critical because what we need is a candidate with broad as well as intense support,” Shah said. “That’s what that first-place metric really demonstrates.”
The Democratic nominee selected at the July 25 convention will face Collins, one of the Senate’s longest-serving Republicans, in what is expected to be one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races.