Gay Mainer Jordan Wood announces bid to replace Graham Platner in Senate race

Out gay politician Jordan Wood has thrown his hat into the ring to replace Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat who was set to face off against longtime GOP senator Susan Collins in November. Wood announced his intentions after Platner dropped out of the race on Wednesday following allegations of sexual assault against him from a previous girlfriend.

Wood announced his intentions on Thursday morning via social media.

“It's official: I’m running to defeat Susan Collins. Not with corporate PAC money. Not with AIPAC or lobbyist cash. With you,” he wrote in a caption accompanying his lengthy statement. “Together we'll stop ICE from terrorizing our streets, pass Medicare for All, and end Citizens United.”

“I have been told that I am too progressive, that I am too young, that a gay man can’t win,” Wood said in his official statement. “These cynics are wrong. They have been wrong all of our lives. They remain wrong today. I’m asking for your support to take back control of our party, and our country.”

In an October interview with Them's sibling publication The Advocate, Wood said the moral test for public office is not about perfection but about what candidates do once their mistakes are exposed. He said Platner’s history of antigay Reddit posts and his Nazi-era tattoo were not merely examples of poor judgment but disqualifying. “I believe deeply in second chances,” Wood said at the time. “But what I saw was someone who doesn’t understand what’s wrong with these statements — how offensive and threatening they are, not just to LGBTQ people, but to people of color and women.”

Wood, 36 and married to a Jewish man, told The Advocate that the timing of Platner’s posts mattered because they were not from his teenage years. Platner admitted to using homophobic slurs and crude antigay language on Reddit as recently as 2021. “If he had written this as a teenager, it’d be one thing,” Wood said. “But this was 2021. The fact that he was my age when he used that language, that’s what matters.” Wood added that if an adult was using that language, “that’s not a youthful mistake — that’s who you are choosing to be.”

Wood joins a crowded field of Maine politicians who could potentially replace Platner ahead of the November election, including Troy Jackson, a progressive former president of the Maine State Senate, Maine Governor Janet Mills’s health director Dr. Nirvan Shah, and former Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Jackson and Shah have announced their candidacies, as well as social worker Paige Loud, Maine Beer Company co-founder Dan Kleban and environmental consultant David Costellao.

Wood has previously served as the chief of staff to former California representative Katie Porter and came in third in a primary race earlier this year to represent Maine’s Second Congressional District. According to the New York Times, he ran on a platform to fight corruption in Washington.

According to his official website, Wood’s platform includes passing Medicare for All, cutting taxes for working families, capping junk fees, breaking up corporate monopolies, restoring abortion rights nationwide, enacting free community college for all, and stopping unlawful ICE arrests.

Wood had previously called for Platner to drop out of the Senate race when it was uncovered that he had used antigay slurs on Reddit, saying that he found the language “disqualifying.”

Platner courted many controversies during his time as a Senate candidate. Though he stood up for trans kids and called attacks on LGBTQ+ youth an “invented culture-war scare,” Platner weathered a number of controversies, including past racist and homophobic comments and the covering up of a Nazi totenkopf tattoo that he received as a Marine in 2007. Platner covered the tattoo in October and said that he had been unaware that the symbol was associated with the Nazi secret police. An anonymous source told Jewish Insider that Platner had joked about having a totenkopf by name over a decade ago.

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