LEWISTON — Democrat Jordan Wood relaunched his campaign for U.S. Senate on Monday saying he’s uniquely qualified to run against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

A former congressional chief of staff, Wood, 36, said he knows how Washington works and has spent more than a year explaining his positions on federal issues to Maine voters.

“It’s time for a change,” he said during an event in his hometown of Lewiston. “We need new leaders in Congress, in the U.S. Senate who are going to stand up and have the courage to fight for our state.”

Wood is one of several Democrats who have said they hope to replace Graham Platner on the Nov. 3 ballot. Platner dropped out of the race last week after a woman accused him of sexual assault in a story first published by Politico. 

Platner denied the allegation but said he could no longer continue in the campaign after national Democrats pulled their support.

His departure means the state party has just two weeks to pick a replacement candidate. A convention is set for July 25 to choose someone new to challenge Collins, who is running for her sixth term.

The race is key to Democrats’ hopes of flipping the Senate from Republican to Democratic control in November.

Other Democrats running include former Senate President Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Nirav Shah and David Costello, who finished third in the June primary. 

Wood said he believes in many of the same goals expressed by Platner, including Medicare for All, increasing taxes on the wealthy and a refusal to accept corporate political action committee donations.

But he said it’s also important for Democrats to now distance themselves from Platner.

“It is very important that who we nominate out of the convention at the end of the month be able to very quickly separate themselves from that candidate,” he said. “Republicans are going to try throughout November to just sow distrust about our nominee, about our party. There needs to be a way to cleanly separate from that.”

The campaign relaunch is a bit of a do-over for Wood, who first announced a campaign to unseat Collins in April 2025. But in November of that year, after U.S. Rep. Jared Golden (D-2nd District) decided not to run for reelection, Wood switched to the congressional race. 

After a ranked choice vote count last month, Wood lost his bid for the 2nd District to fellow Democrat Matt Dunlap.

Wood, who held more than 40 town halls while running for federal office, said he’ll host another meeting with voters on Tuesday in Lewiston, with others likely to follow.

On Monday, Shah, who has already held two town halls and gathered enough signatures to qualify for the convention, unveiled his agenda, a multi-part list that includes holding the Trump administration accountable, passing Medicare for All, fighting climate change and ending “reckless foreign wars.”