A nuanced assessment of Graham Platner

At the risk of getting canceled by readers who passionately love or hate Graham Platner – the Democratic macho bro running for the Senate in pivotal Maine – I’ll try here to assess him with a wee bit of nuance on a wee patch of middle ground. This is risky because our polarized political climate does not abide shades of gray.

Since the long road to a 2027 Democratic Senate goes through Maine, the big question is whether an oysterman with no elective record, a military vet with a Nazi-style tattoo who has treated women badly, “a smart guy with poor impulse control” (as a Maine Dem told me), is nevertheless capable of beating five-termer Susan Collins, who has long abetted MAGA and bears heavy responsibility for the erasure of Roe v. Wade.

My answer is: He has a shot, baggage and all.

Mainers have spoken and told us something important. Platner’s 72 percent share in the June 9 primary was stunning, but more noteworthy was the fact overall turnout was 40 percent higher than when Dems picked a Senate candidate back in 2020. Whether you like Platner or not, it’s clear he has galvanized left-leaning Democratic voters who’ve been longing for a two-fisted fighter. They think, with good reason, there are far bigger issues plaguing America right now than Platner’s less-than-saintly character.

It can be argued Platner is running with the wind at his back. Trump’s national poll numbers are in the toilet, the MAGA brand is circling the drain in Maine, and Susan Collins may be ripe to take the fall for all the havoc Republicans have wrought. Excoriating Platner for his past behavior seems irrelevant at a time when so many Republicans of supposedly good character have been shoveling billions to ICE, slashing food stamp funds, plotting to kick people off Medicaid and Obamacare, and, at virtually every turn, indulging the whims of a fascist convicted felon.

And Collins was Exhibit A in the Brett Kavanaugh debacle. Before casting the key vote to put him on the high court, she was either dumb as a rock or willfully naive to believe his vow to respect Roe as the law of the land. Platner can make a credible case she should be held responsible for the fallout from the 2022 court ruling, for the damage it has done to women. And she doesn’t regret her Kavanaugh vote.

Ditto her Machiavellian maneuverings on Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which cut programs for the needy while slashing taxes on the rich. She cast a key vote to bring the draconian bill to the Senate floor, then voted against it once it was clear there were sufficient Republican votes to pass it. This is how she rolls.

Platner has a golden opportunity to expose her shell game during an election year that seems to favor outsiders. He has already proven on the stump he’s good at skewering insiders. I suspect that many people who are focused on Platner’s baggage have never heard his eloquent progressive message about economic squeeze on the average working stiff. It’s worth the time to hear him out.

One can argue “character” is a dead issue these days, thanks to Trump’s bottomless degradations. One can argue, quite plausibly, Platner’s personal flaws are minor when compared to, say, the serial corruptions of the billionaire class. (As he likes to point out, he never visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island.) But Collins is a viciously seasoned attack dog – she won re-election in 2020 after repeatedly saying her opponent falsely sought to “defund the police,” and her affiliated PACs are already resurrecting stupid stuff about women Platner wrote on Reddit years ago.

“There’s no end to her money hose,” one Maine Dem told me privately, referring to her well-heeled attack team. At last count, over the past year roughly 100 billionaires and their families have donated to Collins’ network. And her attack ads are designed to buttress support from a key Collins constituency: older white independent women who typically vote blue in presidential races but split their tickets for her. They stuck with Collins in 2020 even though she’d voted to acquit Trump in the first impeachment trial and had declared that he’d learned “a pretty big lesson” about abusing his powers.

Platner probably can’t win unless he woos many of those women his way. But the fear, among many Democrats, is they won’t give Platner’s progressive pitch a fair hearing because their perception of Platner will be colored by how Collins paints him.

Maybe that’s not fair to him, but nobody ever said life in politics is fair. He says he has changed for the better, that the past is past. We’ll see if his claim holds up. But the question he asks most often is arguably most relevant: Are his character flaws more important than Trump and his toadies running rampant in the Senate for another two years?