As Maine Democrats scramble to find a replacement for Graham Platner in the race to unseat Susan Collins, a look at the veteran Republican senator's record shows a consistent and hawkish pro-Israel voting history that stretches back decades, alongside repeated public efforts to combat antisemitism at home. Meanwhile, the shortlist of possible Platner successors already includes at least one candidate whose position on Israel echoes the very views that sank his predecessor.
Collins co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act in 2017, legislation that made it a federal crime for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements when protesting actions by the Israeli government. That same year she also backed the Combating BDS Act, aimed at giving states the ability to divest from entities that boycott Israel.
In 2018 she co-sponsored the United States Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act, supporting full funding of the security assistance outlined in the 2016 U.S. Israel Memorandum of Understanding, and in 2019 she voted for the Strengthening America's Middle East Security Act, which further bolstered Israel's security posture. She opposed the Obama administration's Iran nuclear deal in 2015 and signed an AIPAC sponsored letter in 2016 urging President Obama to veto United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
On the domestic front, Collins joined independent Senator Angus King in sponsoring the bipartisan Countering Antisemitism Act, legislation that would establish a National Coordinator to Counter Antisemitism within the White House and require federal agencies to produce annual threat assessments of antisemitic violent extremism. In a statement announcing the bill, Collins said antisemitic incidents had risen sharply since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. On the anniversary of the attacks, she issued a statement describing the massacre as the largest single day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust and condemned the wave of antisemitism that followed in the United States.
Collins had directly clashed with Platner over the issue in the weeks before his withdrawal. She told Fox News in June that she remained a very strong supporter of Israel and accused Platner of contributing to what she described as rising antisemitism in the country, pointing to his past dismissal of AIPAC as a strange or unnecessary lobbying group, an old social media post in which he praised Hamas military tactics, and a skull and crossbones tattoo with Nazi associations that he had covered up only last fall. Platner denied knowing the tattoo's meaning at the time he received it, a claim that has since been disputed.
With Platner now out of the race and the Maine Democratic Party facing a compressed timeline to choose a successor before the July 27 deadline, Collins' record on Israel and antisemitism is likely to remain a central point of contrast against whichever candidate the party ultimately selects, and the field already forming behind him suggests the contrast may not disappear with his exit.
For related coverage, see JFeed's earlier reporting on the tattoo controversy that first put Platner's history under scrutiny, as well as our broader look at the pattern of allegations that defined his candidacy.
Where The Potential Replacements Stand On Israel
The names circulating as possible replacements for Platner carry sharply different records on Israel, a factor Jewish voters in Maine are likely to weigh heavily.
Nirav Shah, the former Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention director who finished second in the recent gubernatorial primary, said this week that he opposes sending American aid to Israel and believes its conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide, a position that puts him closest to Platner's own stance and has already drawn attention from Jewish Democratic groups wary of repeating the same mistake.
Shenna Bellows, Maine's Secretary of State, previously led the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine and signed a 2023 proclamation marking the seventy fifth anniversary of Israel's founding, though she has said little publicly about Israel in recent years and lost badly to Collins in a prior Senate run. Troy Jackson, the former state Senate president who has already declared his candidacy, has said little publicly about Israel but carries ties to the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that has endorsed Hamas.
