{"id":224,"date":"2026-06-15T10:41:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=224"},"modified":"2026-06-15T10:41:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:41:53","slug":"graham-platner-prepares-to-take-on-susan-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=224","title":{"rendered":"Graham Platner Prepares to Take On Susan Collins"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Can the Graham Platner whirlwind sweep Susan Collins out of one of Maine\u2019s Senate seats? Scandalous Reddit posts, tattoos, sexting, rapid-fire accusations, and denials didn\u2019t make it any easier for Gov. Janet Mills to mount a serious challenge against the harbormaster of a small Maine town north of Acadia National Park.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump and Bernie Agree: Let\u2019s Own AI!<\/a><\/p>\n

Platner soundly defeated the two-term governor who steered the state safely out of the COVID-19 pandemic and stood up to President Trump. Mills\u2019s name was still on the ballot after she pulled out of the Senate primary race on the last day of April. Yet she didn\u2019t get even a sympathy bump from voters in what turned out to be a contest of Platner against Platner: the champion of the aggrieved working class vs. the man who lived online too much.<\/p>\n

More from Gabrielle Gurley<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On election night, after throttling Mills 72 percent to 19 percent, Platner unleashed a rhetorical barrage so crisp, clean, and brutal against Collins that there\u2019s no doubt that she\u2019ll have a tough slog ahead to keep her Senate seat. Platner may have more than his share of personal baggage, but he\u2019s undeniably a political talent. Collins and the rest of the Republican machine will have their work cut out for them in their attempt to knock him off his game, in a campaign destined to focus like a laser on affordability and corruption.<\/p>\n

Platner is bound to relentlessly link Collins to President Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and to what he called \u201cthe Epstein class\u201d of sycophants surrounding the president. \u201cCollins is as spineless and corrupt as the establishment she now serves,\u201d he said. He defined his campaign as a testament to a \u201cmovement\u201d of disaffected Mainers, people who have been set up for failure by \u201cthe billionaires and the oligarchs\u201d who clog the halls of power.<\/p>\n

The next day, President Trump promptly labeled him a \u201cthug.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a person like that run for office,\u201d he said without a hint of irony.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any question that if Susan Collins were not running that the Republicans wouldn\u2019t have a prayer this year of holding that seat,\u201d says Alan Caron, an independent candidate for governor in 2018, who later threw his support to Mills.<\/p>\n

IN HIS REMARKS, PLATNER TICKED OFF<\/strong> the problems facing one of the poorest states in the country. There are the homes that residents can no longer afford; the young people leaving Maine for cheaper places to live and work; the closures of hospital maternity wards, including the Blue Hill facility where he was born; and the neighbors disappeared by ICE. He laid the demise of Roe v. Wade<\/em> squarely on Collins\u2019s doorstep after she voted to elevate Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. \u201cShe lied to us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He owes his out-of-nowhere success to voters fed up with a status quo and platitudes about solutions that never materialize. These voters want a disrupter, not an empty vessel crafting programs that may or may not fill the yawning gaps in the state. They certainly don\u2019t want to entertain any more softball questions about the differences between a 41-year-old and a 73-year-old running for her sixth term in the Senate. Platner has batted those away by pointing to more fundamental differences. \u201cIt\u2019s not about age, it\u2019s about our thinking,\u201d he\u2019s said.<\/p>\n

Disaffected voters and young people who typically don\u2019t vote in midterm elections have been drawn to Platner, according to Robert Glover, a University of Maine associate professor of political science. \u201cThese are a lot of my students,\u201d he says. \u201cEven in a political science department, I\u2019m shocked at how cynically some of them view voting and the democratic process; now they\u2019re excited and energized.\u201d Caron explains that blue-collar Democrats who were energized by Barack Obama, but later lost faith in the party and drifted to the GOP, are coming back. These \u201cObama drifters\u201d view Platner as an outsider and change agent.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Deportation Machine Taking Aim at Vulnerable Children<\/a><\/p>\n

Platner leans into his rural Maine-ness. He talked about picking blueberries as a kid and digging for clams. Details like these serve to counteract assaults on his authenticity. Maine has its own homegrown purity tests, ones that former Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, Collins\u2019s last Democratic opponent in 2020, failed. Born in Rhode Island, she was \u201cfrom away,\u201d as Mainers say, having lived in the state for more than a decade (at that time) but not long enough. If you think that doesn\u2019t matter\u2014or shouldn\u2019t\u2014well, there\u2019s a reason that the Platner supporters standing behind the candidate on election night held signs saying, \u201cThey Don\u2019t Know Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n

For someone who isn\u2019t religious by his own admission, Platner credited his political success to a distinct religiosity\u2014Maine voters\u2019 willingness to grant him measures of redemption and grace for his prodigious flaws that have been on display for months. With Trump in the White House, voters\u2019 tolerance for scandal, especially ones that have a whiff of a smear campaign around them, has shifted for both Republican and Democratic candidates. \u201cThe bar for what is a disqualifying scandal is just a lot higher than it used to be,\u201d says Glover.<\/p>\n

YET FOR ALL THESE ADVANTAGES<\/strong>, the harbormaster of Sullivan, Maine, is still up against a five-time senator with formidable financial resources served up by eager donors and suspect super PACs. She has a track record of knocking out poll-leading Democrats like Sara Gideon in a state that\u2019s becoming even more reliably blue\u2014southern Maine is sometimes facetiously referred to as Northern Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Like Mills, Collins\u2019s value-added proposition is her reputation as a steady, effective leader. She\u2019s steered more than a billion dollars to Maine in the 2020s, and finally reached the pinnacle of chairing the Senate Appropriations Committee last year. Her rhetoric signals moderation, but her actions signal otherwise: She expresses concern on issues like abortion, but at the eleventh hour she almost always votes in a way that advances Republican interests\u2014like voting for Supreme Court justices who take away abortion rights\u2014and preserves her leverage in the party. Under a second Trump administration, that bait-and-switch routine partly benefits Maine by operating as a sort of perverse protection plan when dealing with a transactional president. If Platner wins, that protection plan will expire, leaving Maine exposed to whatever fits of retribution might follow a Collins defeat.<\/p>\n

Even so, those calculations could disrupt Collins\u2019s hold on power. \u201cIf that\u2019s not only your strategy\u2014and the strategy that has worked\u2014but [it\u2019s also] part of your political identity, you can be blindsided by these anti-establishment, anti-systemic undercurrents that exist but have always existed,\u201d says Glover, noting that Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019s 2016 primary victory in the state is a prime example of the phenomenon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always been that frustration with a political and economic system that doesn\u2019t seem to serve the ordinary Mainer,\u201d he adds. \u201c[Platner] has just tapped into it in a way that\u2019s been more powerful than anything I\u2019ve ever seen here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins shares another trait with Mills. She\u2019s a reticent campaigner who\u2019ll need to step into the spotlight\u2014a grueling chore for someone who hasn\u2019t held a town hall in decades. Mainers have blasted her inattention to this sacrosanct feature of New England political culture, and some voters have resorted to cornering her at ribbon cuttings. Platner, by contrast, has been crisscrossing the state doing retail politics, holding 83 town halls and innumerable smaller events.<\/p>\n

Short of a scandal surpassing the Epstein debacle, or a dark disclosure about his military service, or his tenure with Blackwater\/Constellis, the private military contractor\u2014which can\u2019t be ruled out\u2014Platner is holding his own so far, leading in recent polls. At the very least, he is at the top of Maine\u2019s Democratic ticket, a place few expected him to be in the run-up to November.<\/p>\n

Read more Ultimate Fighting Beyond the South Lawn<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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