“Hey! That’s not great for you, you f-cking idiot,” Platner says. His hand is bleeding, but he doesn’t stop talking. “Very few people get an opportunity in life to do something really big about things they really, really care about,” he tells me. “And for some weird accident of history, that opportunity arose, and here I am.
—Photograph by Greta Rybus for TIME
Voters gravitated toward Platner anyway. After decades of nominating buttoned-up technocrats with glittering résumés, many Democrats want candidates with flaws, faded ink, and redemption arcs that resemble their own. Platner’s past, in other words, may actually be his path. “Platner’s rise fits a moment where many Democrats feel the traditional playbook hasn’t worked, either politically or personally,” says admaker Jim Margolis, who advised Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. “Democrats are willing to bet on someone who may have a few warts but feels fresh, unscripted, and tuned in. His ‘difference’ may well be his secret sauce.”
On a blue-sky morning in April, Platner arrives at the Ellsworth Public Library, a quaint white-columned colonial 15 minutes from his home. Across Maine, he has been working rooms 10 times this size. But as he greets the group of wrinkled and familiar faces, he is overtaken by emotion.
“F-ck off,” he says tenderly.
Platner hosts a campaign event at the public library in Ellsworth —Greta Rybus for TIMEPlatner may project the kind of blue collar voice Democrats have rarely nominated of late. But his opponents have sought to highlight his family’s money to discredit this working-class image. His grandfather was a celebrated architect who designed the original Windows on the World restaurant and iconic modernist furniture. His father was a lawyer, and his mother owns a successful restaurant in town. Platner briefly attended the elite Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. “I absolutely hated it, because I was surrounded by, frankly, rich kids,” Platner says. “It was a world I did not understand.” He transferred to a prep school in Bangor, where he -captained the wrestling team and acted in community-theater productions. Republican groups have also noted that Platner lives off his disabled veterans’ assistance checks—he gets free health care and $4,800 per month for injuries connected to his service, including herniated discs and posttraumatic stress disorder—and doesn’t collect a salary as an oyster farmer.
Platner went on to serve three tours there as a Marine infantryman, engaging in close combat in Ramadi and Fallujah. “Infantry units have very different versions of value sets and virtues than the regular world,” Platner says. “Literally, it is our job to kill people.” He enrolled at George Washington University in D.C., but struggled to adjust and decided to re-enlist in the Army. On a fourth tour, this time in Afghanistan with the Army National Guard, he led a rifle squad in the Ghorband District, training Afghan police. “I go back to Afghanistan in 2010 firmly believing that I’m part of, like, a new Army, that we’re gonna do it differently. And we did absolutely f-cking nothing differently,” he says. All military brass wanted to know, he recalls, was: “How many foot patrols? How many enemy killed?”
When Platner knew this is a matter of dispute. An anonymous acquaintance told Jewish Insider that Platner was aware of the tattoo’s meaning years before it became national news; the source alleged that in a 2012 exchange, Platner referred to it as “my totenkopf.” Platner’s former political director, Genevieve McDonald, told the Bangor Daily News last October that Platner had informed her in August that he had a tattoo that could be problematic. (She resigned before it became public.) McDonald declined to speak to TIME, but has said it was far-fetched for someone well-versed in military history to not know the meaning of the symbol.
But for those worried about the tattoo, Platner—an outspoken critic of Israel-—compounded concerns by amplifying a post by a notorious anti-semite on social media and appearing on a podcast with a different antisemitic conspiracy theorist. “I don’t know that means he’s gonna lose,” says Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist Democratic organization that backed Mills. “But I do wish we could be talking about -something other than what this guy wrote on Reddit and wrote on his body.”
The town landing in Sullivan where Graham Platner launches to go to his oyster farm —Greta Rybus for TIMEMaterials at the Platner Headquarters in Ellsworth —Greta Rybus for TIMEPlatner returned to Maine depressed, drinking too much, and suffering from PTSD. It was during this period that he wrote many of the 1,800 posts he authored on Reddit under the alias “P-Hustle.” Many of them are angry and offensive. In 2013, he argued women shouldn’t get too drunk if they were worried about sexual assault. That same year, Platner—who did a stint as a Capitol Hill bartender—asked why Black people “don’t tip.” He used a homo-phobic slur in 2018, agreed cops were “bastards” in 2020, and described himself as a “communist” in 2021.
Platner greets voters after his town hall in Augusta —Greta Rybus for TIME
At a town hall on the University of Maine campus, I watched Platner give his stump speech to a packed audience before taking questions. A female veteran and social worker told Platner she was a supporter, but works with sexual--assault victims who remain skeptical given his past comments. She asked him how he would convince voters on the fence. Platner called himself a “moron” with “blinders on” who didn’t previously understand the epidemic of sexual assault. “To those who are still worrying, I get it,” he said. He promised to push for better protections against sexual abuse in the military if he’s elected. Then he got to what has become the thesis of his campaign: “If you believe in transformational politics, which I do,” he said, “you have to believe in the ability of people to transform.” The crowd gave him the loudest response of the evening; several dozen stood to applaud.
Platner doesn’t respond at first. “It’s an Easter lily,” he explains, a little reluctantly, anticipating what’s coming. “These are all over Boston right now.”
“I’m not taking it off,” Platner replies. “A discussion of whether there should be a free and independent Ireland is absolutely a discussion I’d have.” When he covered up the totenkopf, he chose a Celtic knot.
If you believe in transformational politics, which I do, you have to believe in the ability of people to transform.—Graham PlatnerPlatner says he was ambivalent at first. He’d been working as an organizer for several years with the grassroots Democratic group Acadia Action, protesting the Trump Administration and helping the homeless. He says he had considered running for state legislature someday. The Senate wasn’t on his radar. But when Moraff came back to him with a fundraising plan and an idea for a first ad, Platner decided to go for it. “Not a lot of U.S. Senate candidates set out to run their campaigns like community--organizing projects,” Moraff says. When I joined Platner for three days in April, he was doing three or four events a day, from a crowd of 1,000 to coffee with a Trump supporter—a conversation the campaign would clip into a social media video. Platner says he writes his own speeches, which pinball from the New Deal to Apocalypse Now. In interviews he sounds blunt and unrehearsed. But what stands out to his supporters is a fluency for the anxieties of the moment and his ability to connect with the hurt underneath them. When Platner talks about higher wages and better health care, he frames them as ways to give people more time for family, for community, for the things that make life feel fuller. He talks about isolation and loneliness and how they allow divisions to harden.
Platner meets with a Republican voter at the Dunbar Store —Greta Rybus for TIMEInstead of dwelling on Trump, Platner speaks about the billionaires dominating the political system. He has a relationship with Senator Bernie Sanders and wants to bolster the chamber’s populist bloc. He argues that if Democrats don’t pass policies that improve people’s lives, they could lose working-class voters forever. “My biggest fear is if Democrats ride a wave of anti-Trump sentiment back into power, but do it with people who don’t have an interest in showing up for a fight and making change,” he says. “They may never give us another chance, and the next wave of right-wing fascism could be far worse.”
But there’s a reason Collins, the last Republican Senator from New England, is a five-term incumbent. Democrats have had her on the ropes before: Democrat Sara Gideon was up on Collins in several polls in 2020, only to lose by 9 points. While Platner leads in some early surveys, to close the deal he will need to explain how he’ll fill the shoes of someone who has time and again delivered funds for Maine as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Platner's dog Gryffin, with Zevon out of frame —Greta Rybus for TIME
Platner is trying to make amends. He has told people across Maine how ashamed he is of past comments. He held a Passover seder with supporters this spring. He also contends there’s hypocrisy embedded in the criticism. “We have a society that very much glorifies military service. But then the moment we have to talk about the realities of it, everybody’s like, ‘That’s offensive,’” he complains. “I mean, I get f-cking asked about the tattoo every single time.”
All campaigns are a bundle of unknowns. For Gertner, this one also involves added hormones, medical appointments, and the national spotlight. “I have teenage moments where I kick and scream and yell and I say that this is unfair, and then I get it out of my system,” says Gertner, 40. “We knew that he needed to do this.”
A lesson of this that has been terrifying but also reassuring: We can beat them, and we understand politics better than they do.—Graham Platner
Gertner gets frustrated with the portrayals of her husband. “I wouldn’t have married Graham if he hadn’t gone to therapy. I wouldn’t have married him if he didn’t learn from his mistakes,” she says. She describes him as an optimist who sings sea chanteys to the oysters as he’s pulling them up in the nets, and jokes that as the campaign takes time away from work on the water and at the gym, he’s lost the calluses on his hands.
“I want to believe you so hard. But I feel so cynical about politics right now. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this Mr. Smith Goes to Washington thing,” the man said. “Why are you different?”
Platner swept a hand across his auburn beard and launched into his pitch: He doesn’t want to join the Senate to be part of a system. He wants to rip that system apart and build a better one. But that, he acknowledges, requires a leap of faith for voters to believe that he won’t betray their values and has truly transformed. “There’s also an element of this,” Platner admits, “Where I really have to say: ‘Just trust me, bro.’”
Platner arriving at a town hall in Orono —Greta Rybus for TIMEHence then, the article about inside graham platner s controversial rise was published today ( ) and is available on Time ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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