Graham Platner Will Be Maine’s Democratic Senate Nominee
Zeteo broke the news of Platner’s campaign launch. Now the anti-war, anti-Israel oysterman is Democrats’ presumptive Senate nominee in Maine, after Governor Janet Mills suspended her candidacy.
With over a month left in the Democratic primary, Graham Platner is now the party’s presumptive nominee for US Senate in Maine, in the pivotal fight against fake moderate Susan Collins, the five-term Republican incumbent.
Janet Mills suspended her campaign on Thursday, reluctantly ceding the primary to Platner without endorsing him. An anti-war, anti-Israel oysterman and Marine combat veteran, Platner was a complete unknown when he launched his bid. He faced his share of scandals and negative news coverage while building a massive lead in the polls – and ultimately cruising to the nomination.
That Platner came out of nowhere to take control of the race is an embarrassment for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who recruited Mills, the two-term incumbent governor, into the race.
Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, put out a humbling statement on Thursday indicating they will support Platner moving forward. “After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,” they wrote.
Zeteo broke the news of Platner’s launch in August, and we’ve followed his campaign on the ground in Maine. Platner, who was backed early on by Bernie Sanders, appears to be building a grassroots machine, with the candidate declaring in recent weeks that his campaign has 15,000 volunteers. He has packed town hall after town hall around the state, sharing his views with voters and his anger at the political system, presenting a left-wing message focused on building worker power and beating back the forces robbing Americans of their worth, freedom, and time.
Much of the mainstream media and many liberals on social media wrote Platner off after it was revealed that he for many years had a skull-and-crossbones tattoo he got as a Marine that resembled a Nazi symbol. News outlets also dug up Platner’s old Reddit posts, which included misogynistic and bigoted comments, among other things.
The scandals did surprisingly little to affect his primary campaign. He covered his tattoo up, denied he knew its meaning, and apologized. He also apologized for many of his Reddit posts. (It should be noted that throughout his campaign Platner has consistently spoken out against xenophobia, fascism, and right-wing culture-war campaigns against LGBTQ+ communities.)
In Maine, it has been clear that voters were not scared off by the news coverage – and polls supported this. Recent surveys found him with a 30-point lead over Mills, and that he’s leading Collins, too.
Mills’s ads about Platner’s internet posts, featuring video of him shirtless with the tattoo, didn’t move the needle for her – and may have even helped seal the race for Platner. Mills stopped running the ads earlier this month, as her campaign apparently began running low on cash. (A pro-Collins super PAC began running ads targeting Platner on both topics this week.)
While Mills didn’t campaign that hard, Platner has been hustling, and picking up speed. He’s held over 60 town halls, and recently rallied in Portland with progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren, before a crowd of 1,000 people.
“We’ve got a political system that, in many ways, is entirely inaccessible to the average American,” Platner said at a town hall earlier this month in Windham. “[Politics] tends to be conducted by people who we don’t recognize, who don’t often come from our communities and are espousing policies and ideas that do not in any way, shape, or form reflect the things that we think or that we often talk to our neighbors about. I think that you couldn’t come up with a better example of this right now than the war in Iran.”
He continued: “People see it for what it is. They see it as a war that’s been started by Donald Trump, so he can take attention away from the fact that he’s clearly in the Epstein files. It’s a war that everybody can see has been started because [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to get this war to happen for 30 years, and he finally found a president who was sucker enough to go for it.”
Platner spent the evening listing off dark truths and red meat for an increasingly pissed-off Democratic voter base. The crowd, in a small meetinghouse filled to the brim, almost certainly past capacity, gave him a standing ovation.
Here’s what one attendee, Jennifer McGowan, had to say about Platner after the event, speaking with Zeteo: “He seems to have a really firm grasp on the history of this country, and I like that… But also I’m really tired of the Democratic Party being a bunch of pussies, to be honest with you. I think that we’re all too nice, we’re all too worried about how it’s going to appear, how it’s going to look. And I think that there’s a way to be tough and assertive without being immoral. I wish we had more people that would do that. I feel like he’s that kind of guy.”
At one point during the Windham town hall, Platner noted his campaign couldn’t have gotten going without an early endorsement from Bernie Sanders. “I’ll tell you as someone that had no money doing this, I got really, really lucky,” Platner said. “If it wasn’t for the fact Bernie Sanders endorsed me in the first couple of weeks. That allowed us to do small-dollar fundraising on a mass scale. [If] we hadn’t been able to do that, this doesn’t happen.”
I spoke with Sanders in September, when he and Platner rallied together at an arena in Portland.
“I think the Democratic leadership is way out of touch. They’re out of touch on what’s happening in Gaza. They’re out of touch economically,” Sanders told me. “I think we need a grassroots movement in this country which transforms the Democratic Party into a party of the working class that is prepared to fight for the issues relevant to the working class. That’s what Graham Platner is about.”
He said he was backing Platner to send a message to the political establishment: “The idea of having a working class guy, who has never run for office before, take on Senator Collins – and I think there’s a good chance he will beat her – that sends a message.”
“Graham’s background is very, very different,” Sanders said. “He’s not a conventional politician.”
“That sends a message,” he explained, “that ordinary people can step up. You can take on the powers that be, the political establishment. You can win.”
The Democratic political establishment might not appreciate that message – but it’s hearing it loud and clear.
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