Maine’s secretary of state Shenna Bellows weighs another Senate run

Shenna Bellows said she would “seriously consider” entering Maine’s Senate race after Graham Platner suspended his campaign on July 8, giving Democrats a familiar statewide figure as they scrambled to replace him in a contest they see as pivotal to Senate control.

Bellows is already one of Maine’s best-known Democratic officials. She has served as the state’s 50th secretary of state since Jan. 4, 2021, and is Maine’s first female secretary of state. Before that, she spent two terms in the Maine Senate from 2016 to 2020, where she chaired the Labor and Housing Committee and served on the Judiciary Committee.

Her résumé reaches beyond elected office. From 2005 to 2013, Bellows was executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, a post that helped shape her public identity as a voting-rights and civil-liberties Democrat. She also has prior statewide campaign experience: she ran for U.S. Senate in 2014 and lost, then returned to the political spotlight in Maine’s 2026 Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Bellows’ national profile rose sharply in December 2023, when she ruled that Donald Trump was disqualified from Maine’s 2024 primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. She later withdrew that decision after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in March 2024. The episode brought Bellows intense attention and threats, and Maine media later reported that she said her home had been swatted after the decision.

As secretary of state, Bellows has also leaned hard into Maine’s election record and resisted federal pressure. In a Maine government statement, she said the state would fight Trump administration efforts to limit voting by mail and argued that the federal government had overstepped in requesting voter data. That statement said Maine ranked third nationally in voter turnout in 2024, first in 2022, and that 2024 produced the highest turnout in the state’s history.

Bellows’ potential entrance matters because Democrats are trying to keep the seat in play against Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a state Kamala Harris carried in the 2024 presidential election. Platner’s exit left party leaders with a short window to settle on a replacement, and Bellows would bring something few other prospects can match: statewide name recognition, an established donor and volunteer network, and a record that is already known to Maine voters.