The party and the people it claims to serve

NPR reports that calls for Graham Platner to withdraw from Maine's United States Senate race continue to grow, and that Maine Democrats are already drawing up a plan to select a replacement within a fortnight. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is among those calling for Platner's departure. The allegations driving this pressure are described as sexual assault allegations — a matter of the gravest personal seriousness, though I shall not treat it here as mere personal scandal, for it touches directly on the fitness of a public officer and the trust the Republic places in those who seek its highest posts.

What strikes me first is not the particulars of the man but the structure of the moment. The citizens of Maine rendered a judgment at the ballot. They chose a candidate through whatever process their party prescribed. Now the party's apparatus — its chairs, its senators, its committees — works to undo or supersede that choice. I do not say this is always wrong; circumstances can arise where it is entirely warranted. But the Republic ought always to notice when institutions act to reverse the expressed preference of the people, even for good reason, and ask: by what authority, through what transparent process, and with what accountability afterward?

I am told, inferring from NPR's account, that a lawyer named Charles Dingman — described by the New York Times as chair of the Maine Democratic Party — would play a central role in selecting any replacement. Here is where I grow watchful. The replacement of a nominee chosen by voters, conducted by a small number of party insiders however well-intentioned, is a form of concentrated power that deserves scrutiny. Power exercised in haste, in a back room, without the broad participation of the citizenry, tends to serve the faction more reliably than it serves the public.

This is the perennial temptation of faction: to persuade itself that its own survival or electoral success is identical with the public good. A party that loses a Senate seat may console itself that it fought honorably. A party that installs a nominee through insider selection, and then loses, will find the wound harder to explain to those it claims to represent. And a party that wins by such means has purchased its victory with a precedent that will eventually be turned against the very voters it celebrated.

The allegations against Mr. Platner are serious, and if they are credible, they speak to a want of character that no office ought to accommodate. I offer no judgment on their truth — that belongs to investigation and to law, not to the pressure of an electoral calendar. What I counsel is this: let the process be visible, let the voices of Maine's citizens be consulted as broadly as time permits, and let no committee of insiders mistake its own urgency for the people's deliberate will. The office is greater than any candidate, and the Republic is greater than any party's calculation of advantage.