Voters, not DC insiders, will determine whether the Senate candidate is credible and viable.
Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for US Senate, acknowledges applause at a campaign event Friday, June 5, 2026, in Bar Harbor, Maine. (Robert F. Bukaty / AP)
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 Sen. 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.”
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.
And while so much of the 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 Sen. 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 unsettling 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.
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Platner became the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on Republican US Sen. Susan Collins in late April, when Maine Gov. 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 very likely winner, a substantial primary vote for Mills and lesser-known contenders could be a blow to Platner’s candidacy.
On the other hand, if Maine Democrats and their allies give Platner a clear vote of confidence in the primary, he and his backers believe he will be in a strong position to beat Collins. On Friday night, there was no shortage of enthusiasm on the part of Platner’s supporters, who greeted him with standing ovations. Platner responded in kind, telling the crowd, “Since the beginning, Maine, you had my back. When hurtful things I said on the internet a decade ago came out into the public, as I shared my personal journey through PTSD and darkness, of recovery and accountability and growth, Maine had my back. Now, as every single piece of that past and journey gets dug up, litigated and weaponized, you have my back. And when politically motivated, serious and false accusations are made against me, Maine, you have my back. The state of Maine raised me, and the state of Maine saved me.”
The rallygoers also cheered for California US Rep. Ro Khanna, a Platner backer who said, “No one should make excuses for his past relationships, some of which were toxic and volatile. And no one on our side should attack the women who came forward. You know why? Because Democrats respect the equality and dignity of women, and we always will. And we reject, unequivocally, misogyny. We reject it. But you know who else rejects it? Graham Platner. He understood that those years [after he returned from military service] were not the best years of his life. He’s ashamed of some of the things he said and did. And then, he, unlike others, took accountability for it. And he’s worked to be a better man, a better human being. We need to have an honest conversation in this country. We broke thousands of young men by sending them into dumb wars and sending away their factory jobs. We did that as a country. That’s not an excuse. That’s the truth.”
The first test of whether Maine voters share that view will come 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.”
John NicholsTwitterJohn Nichols is the executive editor of The Nation. He previously served as the magazine’s national affairs correspondent and Washington correspondent. Nichols has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.