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<\/p>\nEoin Higgins is the author of \u201cOwned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voice on the Left.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Maine oysterman-turned-politician<\/span> Graham Platner has been drawing consistently packed crowds across the rural state for months as he aims to take on longtime incumbent Republican Susan Collins in this year\u2019s Senate race. He\u2019s regularly outpolling<\/a> his only other viable competitor for the Democratic nomination, Gov. Janet Mills. At 41, he could hold a seat for decades that Democrats have long had their eyes on.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since Mills joined the race last fall<\/a> (Platner announced he was running that August<\/a>), her support has stagnated and even slipped<\/a> in some polls as Platner\u2019s numbers continue to rise. Collins and Mills are in a statistical dead heat<\/a>, with Collins having the edge, while Platner has a few points difference ahead of the incumbent.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Maine voters concerned with electability, those polls lend credibility to Platner\u2019s campaign. He\u2019s in position to take on an entrenched Republican whose feigned objections to Donald Trump\u2019s excesses \u2014 usually expressed as \u201cconcern<\/a>\u201d \u2014 have long driven liberal Mainers insane. So why is he still facing resistance from Senate Democratic leadership?<\/p>\n Platner\u2019s town hall tour of Maine is further raising his profile, even after a number of controversies, most notably a Nazi tattoo<\/a>, threatened his campaign. The more voters get to know him, the more they like him; he\u2019s gone from underdog to favorite in the race. And despite establishment antipathy, he\u2019s finding some friends in other corners of the party.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Three Democratic senators \u2014 Vermont\u2019s Bernie Sanders, Arizona\u2019s Ruben Gallego, and New Mexico\u2019s Martin Heinrich \u2014 have endorsed Platner<\/a>. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is backing him<\/a>, as are individual members of the progressive wing, like Robert Reich and David Hogg, and groups like Our Revolution and the Maine People\u2019s Alliance. Platner also has the ear of the Pod Save America crew<\/a>, a group of influential Democrats aligned with the Obama wing of the party.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the Democratic establishment is trying to draw a line in the sand on the future of the party. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, both Democrats from New York, are actively working<\/a> to elect Mills<\/a>. There is speculation that the governor, who has pledged to only serve one term<\/a> in Washington, is Senate leadership\u2019s preferred candidate because she would be a more pliable member of the delegation, while Platner is seen as more independent and willing to take populist, further left stands.<\/p>\n The race bears similarities to the 2016 Democratic primary for president, when Sanders went up against Hillary Clinton and offered a progressive alternative<\/a>. As in this contest, the machine politician was pitched by the party\u2019s establishment as the more deserving candidate, while the populist candidate to her left ran an insurgent campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s another chapter in the intraparty civil war that has been simmering and often boiling over for decades. The Clinton wing, the Obama wing, the Sanders wing, and every other part of the sprawling political coalition that is the Democratic Party are all still vying for dominance. In 2008, the main dividing line was Iraq; in 2016, the failure of the Obama presidency; in 2020, Trump and Covid.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2026, the party is still reeling from defeat at the ballot box just two years ago, one that was driven by a perception that the party was out of touch with voters on economic issues as well as, reportedly<\/a>, its complicity in Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza. The latter issue has become a flashpoint for conflict between the base and the establishment, especially with Schumer \u2014 who has described one of his roles<\/a> in leadership as ensuring Israel gets \u201call the aid\u201d it needs from the U.S.<\/p>\n For centrist Democrats,<\/span> Mills is their pick for Maine. Seniority means a lot to a certain kind of centrist Democrat. According to Platner, he was told in no uncertain terms that he was expected to stand down \u2014 \u201cI was skipping the line,\u201d he told Slate<\/a> earlier this month \u2014 when he notified Democratic Senate leadership that he was considering running for the seat; the response he received came with\u00a0a threat to turn his life inside out.<\/p>\n \u201cThey essentially said, if we do this, they\u2019re going to come after me,\u201d Platner said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to rip my life apart.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to see what\u2019s off-putting about Platner to the moderate wing of the party. He\u2019s running an anti-war, economically populist campaign with rhetoric aimed at the elites who fund the DSCC<\/a> and the party\u2019s corporatist wing. He\u2019s come out forcefully for trans rights<\/a> at a time when Democrati<\/a>c centrist think tanks<\/a>, friendly to the party\u2019s donor class, are all but arguing<\/a> the party should throw marginalized groups under the bus. He\u2019s also been forthright in calling Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza what it is<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately for the party establishment, the issues Platner is running on are popular with voters \u2014 especially the Democratic base<\/a>. The party has been shifting left since Trump\u2019s first term and Platner, like Sanders and members of the Squad, among others, is taking advantage of those rising tides of progressivism.\u00a0<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to say that Platner doesn\u2019t have his own significant challenges. His posts on Reddit<\/a>, which span a decade, included some language seen as misogynistic, prejudicial, and insulting to Mainers, though clearly antifascist in general and anti-Nazi in particular<\/a>. Most notably, a scandal last fall became a national news story over his tattoo of a Totenkopf \u2014 a skull-and-bones symbol commonly associated with the Nazis \u2014 which led him to publicly apologize<\/a> and have it inked over<\/a>. Platner has claimed he got the tattoo in a drunken haze while on leave in 2007 when he was a Marine and that he didn\u2019t know its ties to the Nazis until last October.<\/p>\n The tattoo has dogged him ever since, with media outlets bringing it up whenever Platner makes the news, and the controversy hasn\u2019t stopped there. Recently, Platner was criticized for appearing on a right-wing podcast<\/a> hosted by a fellow veteran, Nate Cornacchia, who has endorsed conspiracy theories like far-right streamer Nick Shirley\u2019s attacks on Somalis<\/a> in Minnesota and tying Israel to the murder of Charlie Kirk.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the governor has her own baggage. Mills is already 78, and if elected, she would be 85 at the end of her six years in office. It\u2019s a hard sell to Democrats in Maine, who, like their counterparts around the country, are still smarting from the humiliation of watching a visibly declining<\/a> Joe Biden spend his presidency hidden from the public and the media and, when he did appear, fumbling answers onstage or staring off into space.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"OGUNQUIT,](\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2242326052.jpg?fit=3000%2C2000\")