Maine Oyster Farmer Graham Platner Launches Senate Run. Susan Collins Should Be Concerned!

Promising to be “a Senator for all those who can’t buy Senators” (dang, that’s a good slogan), Maine veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner announced this week that he’s running for the US Senate seat currently held by sometimes-centrist Republican Susan Collins. Platner, 40, is a veteran who served in combat in Iraq with the Marines, then started college, but decided to return to the service, joining the Maryland National Guard and getting deployed to Afghanistan, too. Since coming back to the States he’s been an oyster farmer in Maine, and also serves his hometown of Sullivan as its Harbormaster and Planning Board Chair. Per his campaign bio, he and his wife Amy Gertner live three doors down from the house he grew up in, “with their two dogs Gryffin and Zevon and their cat Neptune.”

Look, we here at Wonkette are serious political analysts and we would never stoop to supporting a candidate just for their pets’ names, but we would totally vote for someone with a cat named Neptune. But only if they have a good progressive platform, which oh my, Graham Platner does, big-time.

Let’s enjoy his campaign launch video, shall we? It really captures the fighting spirit Democrats are looking for this year. Platner dismisses Collins’s “centrism” as a “fake charade,” saying, “The difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz is at least Ted Cruz is honest about selling us out and not giving a damn.”

Collins is the incumbent on the ballot, but Platner makes clear that he’s running against the billionaires who have been getting their way for entirely too long, driving both our elections and economic policy. “The enemy,” he says, “is the oligarchy.”

We have a feeling Platner’s message may fit the mood of Democratic voters right now, especially his observation that the US has waged three foreign wars since the last time the national minimum wage was increased in 1991. (You smart Wonkette readers can name ‘em, so we won’t bother.)

Politico, always your Tiger Beat on the Potomac (thank you Charlie Pierce) source for horse race coverage, focuses mostly on how Platner’s campaign “threatens to disrupt national Democrats’ efforts to recruit and unite around Gov. Janet Mills.” We aren’t so sure that’s a top priority for Platner himself, but if that’s the effect he has in Maine’s US Senate primary, so much the better, because while we love Mills and her willingness to stand up for trans folks against Donald Trump, she would be nearly 80 if she defeated Collins and took office.

Most Democrats right now want two things: populists who will fight Republican fascism, and candidates who represent a new generation of Democratic leadership from outside the party establishment. Mills, for all her positives, falls short on that second criterion.

Mills hasn’t announced her intentions yet, although Platner says he will stay in the D primary even if she runs. He has already pledged that if elected, and if Democrats win three other seats in 2026 to retake the Senate, he won’t back another term for Chuck Schumer as Majority Leader.

“The next leader needs to be one of vision and also somebody who is willing to fight,” he said. “And I am not seeing either of those things coming out of the current Democratic leadership in the Senate.”

Platner’s campaign platform — his platnerform? — has a lot to like, including his condemnation of our “new Gilded Age,” in which the super-rich have shaped policy for decades to build

a “billionaire economy.” One that creates explosive growth for a tiny, privileged few, for a handful of billionaires and multi-national corporations; and inflation, stagnation, and decline for the rest of us.

In 1990 there were 66 billionaires in America. Today there are over 900. When you look around, do you see a community that is over 10 times wealthier than in 1990?

And while he says he doesn’t like being called “liberal” or “progressive,” Platner stakes out unapologetically progressive positions on the economy (unions, universal healthcare, taxing billionaires, ending Citizens United, a minimum wage hike, making housing more affordable, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and even support for postal banking). He also supports abortion rights, public schools, and ending Republicans’ culture war interference in people’s private lives.

And unlike some Dems who thought Trump’s win was a signal to throw trans folks under the bus, Platner is unequivocal about standing up for equality:

“I am tired of seeing politicians using small groups of people as a punching bag – be it race, or gender identity, or sexual orientation. Sadly, we have even Democrats trying to pander to what they think Trump voters want by peddling soft bigotry. (Doesn’t work, never has.)

“I will support passing, at last, federal LGBTQ anti-discrimination legislation.”

Goddamn right, and thank you.

Platner also knows very well that he’s running in a state that keeps reelecting Collins, though, which explains why he’s primarily focusing on his working-class bona fides and economic messaging, telling NBC News in an interview,

“If we focus primarily on fighting for working-class values, fighting for policies that help working-class people, clawing back a lot of the power that has been consolidated in the kind of higher establishment-class politics, I think if you stick to that stuff, you can win,” Platner said. “And getting dragged into many of these minor culture war fights is not remotely the answer.”

Not surprisingly, the GOP is already planning to attack Platner for his praise of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and they’re welcome to it, since that only drives home the fact that the GOP doesn’t give two ripe shits for working people.

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[Graham Platner for Senate / NBC News / Politico / NYT]

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