Graham Platner, a Nobody, Is Running for the Senate in Maine. Are We Ready for That?
I deeply hope so.
Today is my 91st birthday, so I’ve been rattling around the political world a while. And I’ve been paying attention. Always a split-ticket voter, I was a Republican until I realized what Reagan was up to and, even then, I voted for the great communicator twice. In the words of many, ‘I didn’t leave the Republican Party, it left me.’ My first presidential vote went to Eisenhower.
That’s enough mea culpa, time to get to the point.
The point is Graham Platner, and if we think an extraordinary but flawed citizen, without political experience, can express a voice. Our voice, for a change.
In order to understand Graham, you have to know his story, and that’s a bit of a long haul https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/magazine/graham-platner-interview.html#commentsContainer. It’s a long read, and very few of us do long reads any more, so I doubt you’ll take the necessary half-hour and then come back to what I have to say.
I read the transcript, and was impressed by the raw history of what he’s been through as a three-tour Marine in Iraq, what it did to him, and how he fought through to recovery.
His story makes any politician who’s not seen battle look pretty thin in the CV department, particularly when they send someone else’s kids off to war.
But, the point is…drum roll…are we forever destined to have politicians run our politics, or are we ready to trust a few seasoned American citizens?
My take on it, after a lifetime of observing, is that politicians come up through the ranks of ass-kissing and taking money from special interests, in order to advance. Why else would a candidate for the Senate spend five or six million dollars of his own (or someone else’s) money to get a job that pays $275,000? You might ask Chuck Schumer, he’s been at it for long enough, is at the top of the minority Senate leadership, and can’t decide how to parse a meaningful sentence.
And yet, there are exceptions lurking out there. AOC is one, a barista that unseated a well-known congressman who had served many terms with what was deemed to be a ‘safe seat.’
There was a message in that. A noticeable crack in the ‘who the hell do you think you are’ power structure. So, if I was a voter in Maine, I’d send Graham off to a shot at making me proud.
Platner is a Marine veteran and Maine oyster farmer who emerged in 2025–26 as a rising progressive Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maine. He built attention with a strongly populist, anti-billionaire message and endorsements from figures like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Enlisting in the U.S.Marine Corps in 2003 and deployed to Iraq in 2005, he served three combat tours, including in some of the war’s hardest-hit areas such as Ramadi and Fallujah.
The experience left him deeply disillusioned with America’s wars and the military-industrial system. He’s spoken about PTSD and the psychological impact of combat, though he also admitted that, as a young Marine, part of him was drawn to the intensity and identity of being a soldier.
That’s why we send young men to war. Not our own kids, but other people’s kids.
When I look back at the political leaders I revere; Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, the senior George Bush and John McCain all come to mind, and every one of them served in the military.
Bush the younger, who ducked active duty, lied us into Iraq, and plunged us from there to the longest war American ever fought, twenty years, four times as long as WWII. His Vice President, Dick Cheney, personally set the stage for torturing prisoners of war, an international crime.
It’s long past time to trust our government to citizens in place of professional politicians.
Mark Twain had a thing or two to say about that profession and, particularly Senators, although I wonder at that narrow a view:
“There are many Senators whom I hold in a certain respect and would not think of declining to meet socially, if I believed it was the will of God. We have lately sent a United States Senator to the penitentiary, but I am quite well aware that of those who have escaped this promotion there are several who are in some regards guiltless of crime--not guiltless of all crimes, for that cannot be said of any United States Senator, I think, but guiltless of some kinds of crime.”
Guiltless of some kinds of crime.
Thanks, Mark, for making the point.