Hi, y’all. Welcome back to The Opposition. As promised, today’s focus is the Democratic primary in the Maine Senate race. This was one of those newsletters where every time I thought I’d finished writing, the race took some new twist. But before we get into it, do me a favor and give Tim Miller some shit for Vandy’s glorious win over LSU yesterday. –Lauren How Maine Became a Fight for the Soul of the Democratic PartyUpstart Graham Platner disavows his shitposting past; Gov. Janet Mills’s establishment allies insist she’s not too old.
Augusta, Maine The grand colonial revival house was built in 1901 for Maine’s forty-fifth governor; nowadays, it’s used as an event venue. But on this night, it was an incubator of energy, political chatter, and a humidity not customary for the usual early-fall chill in this part of the country. Platner wore a henley, rolled up just enough to show off one of his many forearm tattoos. His dirty-blond hair was damp from having ducked outside in the rain to speak to the dozens of people who didn’t make it in the door.
“I’m Graham Platner and I’m from Sullivan,” he cheekily said to a crowd of a couple hundred people. The introduction was unnecessary. They’d seen his viral social media clips and his launch video for U.S. Senate. And whether out of curiosity, inspiration, or something in between, they’d decided on that random Monday evening to come see this oyster farmer, harbormaster, and marine veteran. “I just want to make it very clear that I do not view myself as a politician,” Platner said, kicking off his stump speech. “I certainly didn’t live a life in preparation for this. And I really thought that, frankly, just living in Sullivan, living the simple, fulfilling life that my wife and I have been able to build, that that was going to be it.” But that wasn’t it. Few political figures have had a more fascinating ascent in recent times than Graham Platner. In a matter of just a few weeks, he has gone from being, quite literally, an unknown, to the Democrats’ platonic ideal of a working-class populist candidate. But his appeal can’t be explained in simply superficial terms. For a number of Democrats, Platner has come to embody the notion that, in this era of suffocating political cynicism, there was something—someone—around which they could finally be hopeful. The only question was: Was it too good to be true? We are about to find out. Shortly after Platner’s Monday-evening speech, Gov. Janet Mills announced that she, too, was running for Senate. And then came the oppo dump: Opposition research began leaking out about Platner’s past online posts that included derogatory and insulting comments about sexual-assault victims, cops, rural voters, and more. As the stories kept piling up, I thought back to that Monday-evening address. It seemed, in hindsight, like Platner was trying to warn the crowd that if they were serious about backing candidates like him, then they would have to accept the foibles and imperfections, too.
“I got home from my fourth combat tour, and I was not doing very well. I felt unmoored, I felt disillusioned, I felt alone,” Platner explained. “I had no idea where I fit in in this society, and I did what most combat vets do: I drank too much, I got angry. I spent a lot of time being alone and depressed. And it wasn’t until I started getting help that my life began to turn around.” AS MUCH AS ANY RACE in the country, this primary for the Senate seat in Maine has come to resemble the crossroads—and opportunities—for the Democratic party. At stake is one of the few seats that Democrats believe they can flip: Susan Collins’s. But there are huge divides over how the party thinks it can achieve that. Platner, to oversimply things, represents the belief that the old politics don’t work; that effective messaging and a compelling biography are more important than political or even policy achievements; and that the route to recovery is in winning back white working-class voters. Mills doesn’t lack inroads with Maine’s working class. But her appeal is built on a resume, decades-long connections with voters, and the calluses that come with having been through election wringers before. At 77 years old, her entry into the race ignited heated debates about the party’s gerontocracy problem and the lack of political imagination on the part of Sen. Chuck Schumer (who had worked tirelessly to recruit Mills). But her allies have argued that she’s not some generic, off-the-shelf option—that she’s a history maker, that she’s good on the stump, and that her seasoning is a virtue. By contrast, they say, when it comes to Platner, We don’t know what we don’t know. “The best chance of beating Susan Collins, which is really what I care about, sits in the governor’s hands,” said Dan Kleban, cofounder of Maine Beer Company, who recently ended his own bid for Senate and endorsed Mills. “Graham is just too risky.” Platner has heard these criticisms since entering the race. They were pronounced enough that I felt the need to ask him after Monday’s town hall if he had any skeletons in his closet beyond the DUI he got shortly after he returned home from overseas. “I don’t have that many. I’ve lived a pretty simple life. I have not been close to money and power,” he told me.
Soon after, his old internet postings started dribbling out. CNN published what would end up being the first of many stories digging into Platner’s years-old Reddit comments posted under the handle “P-Hustle.” They varied from the trivial (such as telling the musician Ted Nugent to “suck a dick”) to the perilous (calling himself a “communist”) to the offensive. In a 2013 post, he asked why black people “don’t tip” and in response to a thread about sexual assault in the military, he asked: “How about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?” In response to a 2020 thread titled “White people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks,” Platner wrote: “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are.” Platner had to have known this would have come out at some point—after all, the posts were deleted shortly before his campaign launch in August, likely out of fear that the residue of his days as a Reddit shitposter wouldn’t play well in a Democratic primary. But anticipating the onslaught is different from living through it. Multiple Mills allies argued to me last week that this was proof that Platner had been plucked out of nowhere by alumni of Bernie Sanders’s campaigns and local labor leaders who had a personal ax to grind with the governor. They argued that Platner’s campaign was more superficial than many cared to admit. Some Democratic officials began calling Platner the “Mamdani of Maine,” noting that his launch video was produced by a senior political strategist who was key to Zohran Mamdani’s meteoric rise in New York City. “Graham Platner, in a lot of ways, is like a political consultant’s idea of what a guy from Maine looks like,” Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic consultant, told me. “The fact of the matter is, Janet Mills is popular. Janet Mills has gotten stuff done and she’s gotten elected statewide. If the stakes are as high as everyone keeps saying they are, why on earth would we cast her aside?” LEGACKI MAY BE RIGHT that Platner is more of an unknown than Mills. But while fielding an unknown, untested candidate inherently carries some risk, it’s not the only kind of risk. And it remains unsettled for many Democrats as to which candidate is riskier to run against Collins. There are intraparty arguments about electability and whether Mills’s more moderate and evenhanded style is a better fit in a purple state like Maine than Platner’s economic populism. And there are questions as to whether Mills’s support from the party establishment—including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s decision to form a joint fundraising committee with the governor—will help or hurt. But for now, the main focus is on Platner’s Reddit posts. They have sent the Maine Democratic political world into a tailspin, prompting larger conversations about what it actually means for the party to shed purity tests and what type of past transgressions are too grave to simply move past. “He comes across as somebody who’s flawed and willing to admit that and say he was wrong,” said former Waterville mayor Karen Heck, who is supporting Platner in the primary. “I think that really resonates with people. He’s authentic and I don’t have much worry that he’s going to be this flash in the pan.” As Platner’s defenders argue, winning back working-class voters will require Democratic officials and voters to be less sanctimonious, particularly as more millennials—who grew up posting their internal monologues online—come of age and run for office. Even some of Platner’s political opponents say the party has to be less judgmental. “I think our politics needs to have a bit more grace and recognition that none of us are perfect,” said Jordan Wood, a 36-year-old former Capitol Hill staffer who is also running in the Democratic primary against Platner and Mills, when I asked his thoughts on the initial CNN article. “If we want to have younger people in the next generation run for office, we need to pair that with a recognition that our entire lives have been online.” But how that plays out in practice is unclear. It’s not just that it’s unknown whether more of Platner’s previous online life will surface. It’s a question of why Democrats shouldn’t be thrilled to have a candidate with Mills’s credentials—and her relative absence of baggage. As a two-term governor, Mills doesn’t just have name recognition and deep political connections. She has a lot of credit from earlier this year when she stood up to President Donald Trump at the White House, particularly at a time when other Democratic leaders and institutions were acquiescing to his demands.
As for her age, Maine’s population is the oldest of any state. It’s not hard to imagine a primary in which some liberal voters who might have initially been curious about Platner feel uncomfortable voting for a guy who had no problem throwing around the word “cunt” in online posts just a few years ago. At least one person on Platner’s campaign was disturbed by it: Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s political director and a well-respected lobsterman as well as an advocate for Maine’s fishing industry, resigned Friday, saying that Platner’s Reddit posts “are not words or values I can stand behind in a candidate for the United States Senate.” On Friday afternoon, Platner recorded a five-minute direct-to-camera apology in which he talked about coming back from war with PTSD and feeling “angry about the system that had made me go through that experience.” He said his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan left him feeling “disillusioned” and so he turned to the internet “to post stupid things and get in fights and find some form of community in some way”; it was an “outlet,” he said, “for my rage, for my isolation.” It wasn’t until he moved home, met his wife, and started his oyster business that things turned around. Watching the video, it’s easy to picture Platner’s life taking a path very different from the one he’s on currently. It’s also hard to think of an analogue: When has a Senate candidate experienced such wild grassroots support, multiple old-internet posting exposés, and issued a straight-to-camera apology video all within a month? But maybe that’s just the nature of politics today—in order to reach disaffected and alienated young men, you nominate someone who once was one. For now, at least, the party leaders who have endorsed Platner are standing by him. “Let’s be clear. The DSCC leaked this to try to destroy Platner the day their hand-picked candidate entered the race. I respect Platner’s journey & the man he is today. I reject the politics of personal destruction,” California Rep. Ro Khanna tweeted. “I stand by my endorsement. I won’t cower to the establishment.” KHANNA WAS TAPPING INTO SOMETHING that is very palpable on the ground in Maine—a sentiment that is clearly affecting the Senate race: Democratic voters are tired of their own leadership. It’s that sort of frustration that has helped Platner pack local breweries beyond capacity and cause traffic jams along major roadways with people clamoring to see him speak. His anti-establishment, populist message has earned him an endorsement from Bernie Sanders and praise from a number of admiring sitting senators. Even some in the D.C. old guard have expressed intrigue. “He’s a new type of candidate and I think we need to broaden our appeal as a party,” Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s former chief of staff, told me early last week (pre-Reddit posts). “He’s populist, which is what we need to win back working-class voters.” And therein lies the crux: The essence of Platner’s appeal is that he can help a lifeless party regain its pulse—that he can help Democrats reconnect with the voters who didn’t just abandon them but left the political process entirely. Whether he can do so even after his offensive social media history surfaced is not the main question. The main question is whether it’s possible for any Democrat to do this at all. There was, at least, one attendee at Platner’s Monday town hall event who made me think it could happen. Kevin Downing, 66, told me that it was his first time attending a political gathering. Downing’s wife died of cancer in December and after he saw a social media clip of Platner speaking about a broken health care system, he was hooked. “I always thought that Susan Collins was a typical Mainer who thought with her head. But she’s stopped doing that,” said Downing. “Winning is the priority. And we need someone who gets that.” My open tabs:— The Democrats’ Main Problem Isn’t Their Message You’re a free subscriber to The Bulwark—the largest pro-democracy news and analysis bundle on Substack. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and to access ad-free and member-only shows, become a paying subscriber.We’re going to send you a lot of content—newsletters and alerts for shows so you can read and watch on your schedule. Don’t care for so much email? You can update your personal email preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here. Having trouble with something related to your account? Check out our constantly-updated FAQ, which likely has an answer for you.
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