.jpeg) |
| (Instagram) |
While national Democrats worry about the unsettling revelations surrounding U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, Maine Democrats are expected to head for the polls in today's primary and stand by their man. That's the take-home message from John Nichols of The Nation, who spent last week traveling the state and interviewing its inhabitants about their hopes and expectations as the country's most watched June primary drew near.
When Mainers talk about Platner, Nichols found, it's not so much about policies or issues, messages or style. Instead, it's mostly about who the candidate is and where he is from. As one resident said, "He's just Maine. He sounds like Maine." To some outsiders, that might seem like an insular way to view a race that figures to have national implications. But Platner, who grew up in Sullivan -- a town of 1,219 residents (as of the 2020 census) on Maine's Upper Schoodic Peninsula -- is a Mainer through and through. One senses that the residents who spoke with Nichols see Platner as a local boy who they want to help make good.
Nichols' dispatch was published yesterday under the headline "Graham Platner is about to find out whether Mainers really have his back; Voters, not DC insiders, will determine whether the Senate candidate is credible and viable." Nichols opens with the thoughts of a woman named Corinn Keblinsky, who was attending a Platner campaign event in Bar Harbor, Maine:
Corinn Keblinsky surveyed the crowd of Graham Platner backers that had packed this town’s historic Criterion Theatre on the Friday night before Maine Democratic primary voters will send the first tangible signal regarding the fate of Platner’s US Senate candidacy.
Keblinsky, an accountant from Standish, Maine, said she was more interested in the verdict that will be rendered Tuesday by the people seated around her—and by voters across the state—than in the pronouncements from pundits and politicians in Washington.
Like everyone who pays attention to politics in Maine, Keblinsky was well aware of an increasingly frenzied national debate about Platner, the 41-year-old Marine veteran and oyster farmer turned US Senate candidate whose controversial past has dominated cable news shows and newspaper front pages in recent days. And she was frustrated by the national coverage. “It’s out of control,” she said. “They’re all talking about Maine, but they don’t know Maine.”
This was a common theme among Mainers I spoke with last week in Bar Harbor, Blue Hill, Bangor, and other communities around the state. While Platner is facing a firestorm from national commentators—some who see reports on Platner’s sexting, since covered-up Totenkopf tattoo, and “toxic” relationships as “disqualifying,” and others who simply worry that a weakened Platner might fail to dislodge Republican US Senator Susan Collins in November and upend Democratic prospects for retaking the Senate—the candidate maintains substantial support in the state, where his campaign literature declares: “Maine First. Maine Always.”
As a weekend headline from Maine’s largest newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, explained, “Maine Democrats largely stand by Graham Platner amid D.C. worries.”
As the headline on The Nation story makes clear, Maine voters, not DC insiders, will decide Platner's fate. And Mainers are taking Platner's candidacy seriously, looking beyond the baggage he carries to the statements he makes and the issues he has put front and center, as Nichols reports:
Why the dichotomy between the state and national discourse? Many voters said they have a sense of regional connection with Platner. “He’s just Maine. He sounds like Maine,” said Keith Tharp, a photographer from the town of Mount Desert. “When he’s talking, he comes across as a Mainer. So, we want to hear what he has to say.” What they’ve heard, argues Erin Oberson, a co-president of the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses United, which has endorsed Platner, is “a candidate who will represent the working class”—a determined advocate for Medicare for All and saving rural hospitals, for strong unions and pay equity, for taxing the rich and standing up to oligarchy.
That last point might be the most important one of all. One senses that Mainers are not big on oligarchs, and Platner makes sure they know he shares their concerns about the influence of the ultra wealthy in Washington, especially during Donald Trump's second term as president. After all, a strong argument can be made that a billionaire, Elon Musk, essentially bought the White House for Trump in the 2024 election. Nichols writes:
While so much coverage of the Senate race has focused on Platner’s stormy personal life, his struggles after returning from four combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on a string of divisive comments he left on online forums, much of the talk in Maine is about where he stands on the issues—and on a broader fight over economic inequality and whether working Mainers will be able to afford housing, healthcare, and heating oil in winter.
“We’ve been robbed of things in this world by the people who run it,” said gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson, a veteran union activist and legislator whom Platner has backed for governor. “This isn’t a campaign. This is a movement,” declares Jackson, who, like Platner, has been endorsed by US Senator Bernie Sanders and echoes the message of the two-time presidential contender, who remains popular in Maine.
“We’re not from the left. We’re not from the right,” declares Jackson. “We’re from the bottom, and we’re rising.”
The extent to which this rising will benefit Platner remains to be seen. But if there was one sentiment that came through loud and clear after a week of troubling reports on Platner’s past, it was that Mainers want to have their say.
The controversy surrounding Platner has, unquestionably, heightened interest in Tuesday’s primary.
Platner became the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on Republican US Senator Susan Collins in late April, when Maine Governor Janet Mills—a favorite of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic strategists in DC—suspended her bid for the party’s Senate nomination. Now Mills is saying, “People have the impression that I withdrew or dropped out, but I simply suspended active campaigning. I’m still on the ballot.” Mills yard signs have reappeared in some places, and newspaper columns have talked up the options of supporting her or another candidate, David Costello.
What this means is that, on Tuesday, Maine Democrats have a chance to provide tangible evidence of their sentiments regarding Platner. While he is still seen as a likely winner, a substantial primary vote for Mills and lesser-known contenders could be a blow to Platner’s long-term candidacy.
A strong showing in today's primary could put Platner in a solid position against Collins in November's general election. And that could heighten Democrats' chances of taking over the Senate from GOP rule. Nichols writes:
The first test of whether Maine voters share that view comes Tuesday, in a high-turnout primary that will send a powerful signal about whether Mainers really do have Platner’s back. That’s not guaranteed. But, if they do, Platner will mount a fall campaign that seeks to shift the debate away from his past and toward a Maine-focused critique of Collins—as he did in his final pre-primary campaign appearances. Cheered on by Portland supporters Sunday night, Platner said of Collins, “She has always been there to cast votes for the stupid foreign wars [the government] starts and sends young men like [Platner] to fight in. She’s always there to support that. She’s always there to make sure that the defense companies that donate money to her—or that her lobbyist husband represents—that there’s always money for them. She is always there to make sure that when money gets appropriated at the federal level, [it] goes in the pockets of corporations long before it goes in the pockets of working Mainers. She’s always there for that stuff, but she’s never there for us.”
No comments:
Post a Comment