A Marine Corps and U.S. Military veteran who was deployed within the Center East introduced his marketing campaign for Senate in Maine on Tuesday, searching for to oust longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins, who’s eyeing her sixth time period in Washington, D.C.
Graham Platner is a 40-year-old oyster farmer from Sullivan, Maine, who believes working-class individuals within the state are struggling by the hands of massive companies and politicians in D.C. He factors his finger at 72-year-old Collins and what he sees as her failure to face as much as President Donald Trump and his legislative agenda.
“Nobody can tell me Collins doesn’t know how to use power,” the Democratic candidate mentioned in an interview with HuffPost. “She’s very well-versed in the mechanisms of the Senate. She chose not to use that power to hold up the bill that was going to destroy Medicaid for so many Mainers. I’m not fooled by that.”
Collins voted in opposition to Trump’s large invoice chopping Medicaid and taxes on the rich — however her earlier vote to advance the measure was crucial in clearing its path to passage. As chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the senator has additionally watched Trump’s White Home withhold tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from federal packages which have bipartisan assist.
“I think she has worked this complicated charade,” Platner added. “She pretends to be a moderate to appeal across the spectrum, while very often voting along with Republicans.”
Democrats’ street to retaking the Senate majority in subsequent 12 months’s midterm elections runs largely by means of Maine, a blue state that Kamala Harris carried by seven factors within the 2024 presidential election. But the occasion has struggled to recruit top-tier candidates to problem Collins, a formidable opponent who has a big marketing campaign conflict chest. Platner joins former congressional staffer Jordan Wooden in working for the seat. In the meantime, most Democrats are holding out hope that 77-year-old Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) enters the race regardless of being noncommittal concerning the thought.
Collins may face a harder path to reelection this time round. She has seen her polling plummet through the first six months of Trump’s second time period, and Democrats might be desperate to tie her to his legislative agenda of cuts to rural well being care and different widespread authorities packages. Trump’s tariffs have additionally wreaked havoc on Maine’s financial system, which is reliant on cross-border commerce with Canada.
Nonetheless, Collins has survived scares earlier than. Throughout her 2020 reelection combat, she was vastly outraised by her opponent, then-Maine state Home Speaker Sara Gideon, and the GOP senator persistently trailed within the polls. In the end, Collins got here out on high at the same time as Trump misplaced the state to Democrat Joe Biden.
For Platner, a tattooed vet who did 4 infantry excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the choice to run for political workplace was borne out of affection for his nation and the state of Maine.
“I’m watching it in many ways get ripped apart by the collapse of the rural health care system, the inability of people to afford housing and watching immense amounts of taxpayer money get expended on wasteful foreign wars,” Platner informed HuffPost. “I’m doing this because I love this place, I cannot stand by and live a good life while everything I feel connected to falls apart around me.”
He known as Trump’s deployment of Nationwide Guard troops in D.C. and different cities a “horrific abuse” of the capabilities of the U.S. navy.
“This is not the America we want to live in, full of armed, uniformed, masked agents,” he mentioned. “This is dystopian. It is not the America that many people voted for, including for Trump. Many are friends of mine. This is not something we as Americans want to see our government do.”
And he criticized “feckless” Democrats for failing to attach working class Individuals, urging the occasion to get harder in opposition to Republicans and remove the Senate filibuster rule if and after they regain the bulk.
“You can’t win a chess match when the other side turns the board over and starts to beat you with it,” he mentioned.
