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IT’S NOT EVERY DAY that a tattooed oyster farmer becomes a national political sensation. But Graham Platner has experienced what can only be described as a meteoric rise since announcing his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Maine U.S. Senate seat now held by Susan Collins. Clips of Platner speaking at town hall events have racked up millions of views, and the 41-year-old Marine Corps and Army veteran has earned the adoration of other Democratic senators for his plainspoken approach to voters. Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked with a number of Democratic strategists who have been stunned by Platner. They see in him the type of candidate who can help the party shed its elitist reputation and even steer it out of the wilderness.
But their optimism is laced with trepidation. Platner remains unknown, untested, and, before Gov. Janet Mills announced her own Senate campaign this week, largely unchallenged. Beyond their specific concerns about the candidate, Democrats don’t want to be made fools once more: For years, they have dreamed of taking down Collins, only to be foiled time and again.
To get a feel for Platner and his politics, and to better understand the trepidation, I traveled to Maine and sat down with the man. I happened to do so just as Mills was announcing her campaign, setting up what is likely to be a bruising primary and proxy fight about the future of the Democratic party.
“We’ve been sending up well-tested people for decades, and the country is in worse straits than it’s ever been. It’s a mess right now,” Platner said when asked how he compared to Mills. “It’s time to do something different.”
I’ll have a longer piece about the dynamics of the Maine Senate race in the Sunday edition of this newsletter. For now, here is my interview with Platner following his town hall in Augusta on Monday. The conversation below has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Become a Bulwark+ member to read and watch it in full.
LAUREN EGAN: You have a ton of momentum right now. But to the extent that there’s hesitation, it’s the fact that you’re untested—and we don’t know what skeletons are in your closet. So, if you want to tell us what skeletons are in your closet, please go ahead.
GRAHAM PLATNER: I don’t have that many. I’ve lived a pretty simple life. I have not been close to money and power.
EGAN: But what do you say to the hesitation from folks who say that you’re just not as tested as someone like [Gov. Janet] Mills?
PLATNER: We’ve been sending up well-tested people for decades, and the country is in worse straits than it’s ever been. It’s a mess right now, and it’s a mess that is, in my opinion, built specifically by the political class. And it’s time to do something different. It’s time to run a different kind of playbook. It’s time to engage with a different kind of politics. If we’re going to beat Susan Collins, we need to run a kind of politics, a kind of campaign, . . . that actually engages working Mainers, engages regular people. People feel so disengaged from politics these days. The reason that we have these turnouts is because this makes people feel engaged. This doesn’t happen for other people. This isn’t happening on other campaigns. And it’s not because of me. In many ways, I’m just coming out and saying to people what they already know to be true. People are angry, people are frustrated. People feel so alienated from the political system. And I do not think that the answer to that is the exact same kind of politics and the exact same kind of campaign, and in many ways, the exact same kind of candidates, that we’ve been running year after year after year.
EGAN: I think people look at you and they see the tattoos, the military background, the ear piercings—and they think, ‘This is the kind of guy that can appeal to a more moderate type of voter.’ But that seems superficial to me, like a kind of aesthetic. So is it more than that?
