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Graham Platner, a 40-year-old veteran of both the Army and Marine Corps who completed four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, announced on Tuesday that he will be running for the Senate in Maine. Platner enters an expanding Democratic primary field aiming to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Platner, originally from Sullivan, Maine, is now an oyster farmer. His campaign will focus on universal health care, affordable housing, and ending U.S. military involvement in foreign conflicts.
“I feel an obligation to protect this place and protect the people in it,” Platner said in an interview.
Platner is joining an expanding Democratic primary that also includes Jordan Wood, who previously served as a chief of staff for former Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., and David Costello, a past challenger to independent Sen. Angus King.
Democratic Governor Janet Mills has expressed she might join the race, while Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, has decided not to participate in the emerging primary. Democrats view this race as a prime chance to capture a Senate seat in 2026 since Collins is the lone Republican senator representing a state carried by Kamala Harris in the last presidential election.
Despite this, Sen. Collins has shown resilience in typically Democratic-leaning Maine. In her last election, she defeated Democratic competitor Sarah Gideon by over 8 percentage points, even though Donald Trump lost the state by more than 9 points.
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, meaning Democrats would need to flip four seats in the 2026 midterms to take the majority.
Platner said his experience in the military helped shape his political perspective as he prepared his campaign.
“When I enlisted in the Marine Corps, it was because I had a deep belief in the American vision,” Platner stated. “I wanted to fight for something I cherished and believed was just in Iraq and Afghanistan. I witnessed repeated failures in policies, strategies, and tactics.”
“There’s a point where you have to start asking yourself what is the point of this,” he added. “Why are you doing this? And when I went back as a security contractor in 2018, what I began to realize is that I was just watching vast amounts of taxpayer money getting put into the pockets of defense contractors, of security contractors, of this whole apparatus that almost seemed to exist merely to take taxpayer money and put it into somebody’s private bank account. And in seeing that up close for a while, it turned me into a deeply, deeply cynical and angry guy. From that I began to kind of look at our larger political system, our larger economic system, and you just begin to see the same exact thing.”
Platner is seeking to connect with working-class voters who’ve migrated toward the GOP in recent cycles. He pointed to Golden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., as figures offering hope for the Democratic Party nationally and in his state.
“If we focus primarily on fighting for working-class values, fighting for policies that help working-class people, clawing back a lot of the power that has been consolidated in the kind of higher establishment-class politics, I think if you stick to that stuff, you can win,” Platner said. “And getting dragged into many of these minor culture war fights is not remotely the answer.”
“I don’t just identify with the more of the left parts of the party. People like Jared Golden are doing an excellent job. That’s why he’s been able to hold on to a Democratic seat in a Trump district,” Platner said.
In his launch video, Platner excoriated “billionaires and corrupt politicians profiting off and destroying our environment, driving our families into poverty and crushing the middle class,” saying his military experience made him unafraid to “name an enemy, and the enemy is the oligarchy.”
“I’m not fooled by this fake charade of Collins’ deliberations and moderation,” he said.
