Graham Platner’s collapse underscores Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement woes in key Senate races

Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections,Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has sought to put her political muscle into action by elevating Democratic candidates nationwide who share her progressive populist vision.

So far, it’s not going the way she hoped.

Several of the most high-profile candidates backed by Warren have been busts,either by losing in their primaries or ending their campaigns early.

Perhaps her most prominent candidate, former Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner, collapsed so disastrously that it could boomerang on Warren and other notable Democrats who vocally championed him.

Last week, Platner ended his campaign in the wake of sexual assault allegations — throwing the must-win Maine race into chaos and sparking fierce recriminations within the party over who enabled Platner’s rise.

Warren endorsed Platner in March — at a time when he was coming under increasing attack over his history of offensive social media comments — and proved a key defender of him until she too called on him to exit the race last week.

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Days before Platner’s withdrawal, Mallory McMorrow, Warren’s pick in the Aug. 4 primary for Senate in Michigan, suspended her campaign after failing to pick up traction. A state senator in Warren’s progressive vein, McMorrow was effectively boxed out by Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate who is the pick of the Democratic establishment, and Abdul El-Sayed, backed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

In Iowa’s contested Senate primary in June, Warren made a big bet on progressive state Senator Zach Wahls, who centered sharp attacks on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in his campaign. He was trounced by state Representative Josh Turek, who was backed by party leadership, by a margin of 63 percent to 37 percent.

And in California, she endorsed her former law school student, Katie Porter, in that state’s gubernatorial race; Porter ended up earning fewer than 5 percent of the vote in the all-party primary in June.

Despite the closely scrutinized misses, Warren has notched some key wins to bring up her endorsement batting average. In the Illinois Senate primary in March, she backed Lieutenant Governor Julianna Stratton, who prevailed over two more center-left rivals. Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado, facing an unexpectedly tough left-wing challenger, featured Warren’s endorsement in his TV ads on his way to a very narrow primary victory last month.

And Warren’s preferred candidates have won several contested primaries for US House.

It’s possible Warren and her allies will be able to claim a win in Minnesota’s upcoming Senate primary, where they have backed Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, who is locked in a tight battle with Representative Angie Craig. (Craig is backed by several more moderate senators.)

Warren is also supporting Democratic candidates in other key battleground races. She raised $400,000 for state parties in Georgia, North Carolina, Alaska, and Ohio, where Democrats are hoping to win seats that could secure the party control of the Senate. She also gave to the state parties in Michigan and Maine, which will support the eventual nominees, even if they are not Warren’s candidates.

But the Massachusetts senator has drawn considerable attention to, and spent considerable political capital for, her picks in Maine, Michigan, and Iowa — all states that will help determine control of the Senate in November, and all races that have become outlets for Democrats’ roiling factional divides.

When asked by the Globe on Wednesday if she saw her candidates’ failures as setbacks for her influence or the popularity of progressive ideas this cycle, Warren pivoted away from the specific record of her candidates and toward their policies.

“I think it’s important that we support candidates who are in the fight to lower costs for American families,” Warren said, in a brief interview. “I support candidates who don’t take PAC money and who make that fight a central part of their lives, and that’s what I’m going to keep right on doing.”

There are few endorsements for a progressive hopeful more coveted than Warren’s, who offers a national profile and a grassroots fund-raising base. Typically a careful endorser who chooses candidates only closely aligned on policy, Warren carries a seal of approval that can also be a meaningful sign of a candidate’s progressive bona fides.

Warren has endorsed hundreds of Democrats in her career, but 2026 is the first election cycle in which she’s waded into primaries for Senate seats at this scale and with a distinct mission.

“She has always taken pride in being a team player and mainly uses her clout to help the party,” said Dan Geldon, a longtime top political adviser to Warren, who pointed to her support of state parties.

“But she has been increasingly willing to rock the boat because the party and the whole system have a lot of problems and we live in an environment where it is increasingly necessary to rock the boat,” he added.

In a speech in January, Warren laid out her thinking on the topic. She criticized the tendency of Democratic candidates to favor a “nibble-around-the-edges” approach to politics — which she called “a good way to appeal to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as they decide which primary candidates they will support.”

The senator unabashedly pushed for populist candidates who would emphasize affordability concerns and antagonize wealthy interests.

“But it doesn’t take a political genius to conclude that in a democracy, when the choice is between ‘make the rich richer’ and ‘help everybody else,’ winning elections is about choosing ‘everybody else,’” Warren said.

Beyond Warren, an unusually high number of Democratic senators are also endorsing in contested primaries, fueled by many of the same frustrations she voiced. Sanders was Platner’s first and biggest endorser, but other senators followed suit. Sanders did not endorse in Iowa, but got behind El-Sayed in Michigan; other nationally prominent Democrats, like Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, got behind McMorrow’s bid.

Among more center-left Democrats, there’s been simmering frustration with the interventions by Warren and ideologically aligned senators. That has evolved into full-blown anger in the wake of Platner’s exit.

“The Platner endorsement was a shocking lapse in judgment from Elizabeth Warren,” said Jim Kessler, a former aide to Schumer who is now executive vice president of the think tank Third Way.

“The breadcrumbs were evident, long before she made her endorsement. No one should be surprised by any of the recent allegations about Platner,” Kessler said. “You have to be a willful accomplice to spread the fiction that this was a changed man.”

When Warren endorsed Platner in March, it came at a crucial time. His chief primary opponent, Maine Governor Janet Mills, had begun running negative TV ads highlighting his social media comments about sexual assault. His offensive Reddit comments, and his tattoo with Nazi imagery that he later had covered, had been publicly known for months. In April, Warren rallied with him in Portland, appearing onstage with him and calling him “my kind of man” — a turn of phrase that is already coming back to haunt her.

In early June, on the heels of reporting that he had sent explicit texts to women who were not his wife as recently as last year, Platner visited Washington to meet with senators, including Warren. He reportedly insisted to them that no more damaging stories were coming. Barely one month later, many of those senators were calling on him to end his campaign.

Asked by reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday if she regretted her Platner endorsement, Warren avoided a direct answer. “I asked him to withdraw,” she said. “He withdrew, and now I’m focused on our getting back the majority.”

Speaking to the Globe, Warren insisted the forthcoming class of Democratic candidates — and lawmakers — would be solidly progressive, despite the failures of candidates she and other like-minded figures had backed.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Warren said. “Look, however you want to describe the range of people, the ideas that we’re pushing on reducing costs for families, on housing, on child care, on health care — that’s what all the Democrats are running on, and that’s what we’re going to drive, and that’s how we’re going to get the majority.”