Five takeaways from Graham Platner’s New York Times interview
Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on Republican Susan Collins in the Maine US Senate race this fall, has run on a platform of being working-class first and a challenge to party establishment.
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In the race for control of Congress, Platner is now one of the Democrats’ best chances of retaking the Senate. But his freshman campaign has not been without controversy, and some Democratic leaders have hesitated to back his bid.
Platner sat with The New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro for a far-reaching interview that covered his time in the Marines to his controversial Reddit posts. Here are five takeaways from the Times’ Platner interview.
Where he stands on Chuck Schumer
After Maine Governor Janet Mills ended her campaign for US Senate, Platner said he received his first call from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, describing the call as short and focused on the same goal: defeating Collins. But Platner did not soften his criticisms of establishment politicians like Schumer, who had recruited Mills to run against Collins, and did not back Platner until Mills was out.
“Leadership in the Democratic Party has failed the moment,” Platner told the Times. “I don’t think Senator Schumer has risen to the occasion, and I think we need new leadership in the party, without question.”
Platner also insisted that even with stronger support from the DNC — namely, funding — his message as an “outsider” will remain the same.
“The thing that’s important to know is we welcome their support with the money, but we’re not going to take direction or advice on what we’re doing because what we’ve built is ours,” Platner said.
What is ‘working class’?
The core of Platner’s campaign is that he is “friend of the working Mainer.” But the Times raised questions about his own class roots: Platner’s father was an attorney,and his grandfather was an architect who studied at Cornell. Platner acknowledged during the interview that his father gave him assistance to buy the house he and his wife live in, but said that he works “incredibly hard” and does not make “a lot of money.”
“In the state of Maine, almost everybody’s working class. Everybody works, everybody struggles,” he said. “If the hospital closes and that really impacts you, you’re probably a working-class person.”
Platner currently lives and works in Sullivan, Maine, as an oyster farmer. He told the Times that much of what he and his wife have been able to do is because of “luck” — and because of his health insurance and pension from serving in the US military.
Platner also said that he gets a “chuckle” out of people who question if he is “really working class,” calling it “a tool.”
“It’s a political weapon that throughout history has been deployed against people whose primary political goal is to improve the lives of working folks around them,” he told the Times.
Controversies about his tattoo and Reddit
Platner has faced plenty of pushback from Democrats and Republicans over a tattoo that he got on his chest while serving in the Marine Corps in Croatia. The skull and crossbones image, which Platner has since had covered, resembles a Nazi image associated with Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary.
Platner told the Times that he had the tattoo for years, since 2007, without anyone making a connection to the Nazi party, and that several of his fellow Marines got the same tattoo.
“If I had thought I had something that was this obvious anti-semitic thing, I would not have done that, because that would be utterly insane,” Platner said.
Now-deleted Reddit posts made by Platner have also been a flashpoint of his campaign. The comments have ranged from inflammatory remarks about race to insensitive comments about sexual assault victims.
Platner told the Times he deleted the posts well before he decided to run for office, and said he “stopped using the internet because I got happy.” He said that the “worst comments” come from when he was “in a pretty dark place.”
An anti-war proud Marine
Platner, who served eight years in the US military, including combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has positioned himself as an anti-war candidate, which he acknowledged to the Times is “strange.”
He said that he wanted to be a soldier “since I was about 2,” but that in high school he started to form opinions about the war in Iraq under President George Bush. Platner said that before he joined the Marines in 2005, he knew many servicemen who were against the war. Platner later also served in the US Army.
“I don’t have many friends in the Marine Corps who, when we were serving, said, ‘I’m definitely here to fight for George Bush,’” Platner said. “You’re there because you were a young, angsty man and you wanted to go have an adventure and you wanted to fight.”
Platner also talked to the Times about his struggles with PTSD, and said that he struggled with drinking after he finished his service. He also briefly worked as a military contractor overseas in 2018 “because I was broke and lost and I had no idea what to do with myself and my skills,” but that he eventually quit, moved back to Sullivan, and started his oyster farm.
Platner said that he has a complicated relationship with his time in the military. “We tried our best, we truly did. But it doesn’t matter if you try your best inside of a flawed policy and a flawed system. It’s flawed from the top down.”
He also pointed at Collins, who he said “voted to send me to Iraq.”
“If I have any anger, it is reserved for the political system itself and the people in it who view war not as a thing that has a human toll but as a political game,” Platner said.
Thinking about 2028
Platner said that he wasn’t sure who he wanted to see as a 2028 presidential candidate, but dismissed people who may want to see him run for the White House: “I’m not a savior.”
He told the Times that he doesn’t want to see “many of the people that have been doing it for years” as the Democratic Party’s nominee. He did mentioned California Representative Ro Khanna, who has “done an excellent job, and I’ve heard his name bandied around a bunch on this topic.”
“But I also wouldn’t be surprised if the person we see in 2028 we haven’t even started talking about yet,” Platner added. “People are looking for radical change, and I don’t know where exactly that’s going to come from.”
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