People are gonna be real upset when he pulls a Fetterman. Dude was a security contractor with Blackwater in Afghanistan in 2018.
Platner attended John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor. He earned the “most likely to start a revolution” yearbook superlative in 2003, appearing in the photo with a sign declaring “Free Kosova, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Kurdistan, Tibet”.
Sounds like he was like me, someone who is left aligned but fell for the propaganda surrounding 9/11. That and him being disillusioned with the security contracting makes me think he isn’t a plant. But wikis can say anything, only time and his voting record will tell.
I’m sorry, but anyone that joins up with Blackwater in 2017 after having already served 4 tours in the middle east is not someone who fell for the propaganda. First three tours, sure fine, whatever. But coming back and going to college and then pulling another tour, and after that working as a mercenary? No wonder he said don’t shame the old lady who hates immigrants.
Asked why he served in the Iraq War after protesting it, Platner said, “I thought I could do some good. And I wanted to play soldier. I might have read too much Hemingway.”
Again, I hope I’m wrong about this guy, but this quote from his wikipedia says a lot to me. Everyone else I’m sure will read the first sentence and say he was simply misguided or swayed by propaganda, but that second sentence is far more telling than the first.
Yeah, and then he quit saying that what he was going on there was fucked up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Platner
Graham Platner (born 1984 or 1985) is an American oyster farmer, harbormaster, and military veteran who is running in the Democratic primary in the 2026 United States Senate election in Maine, seeking to unseat Republican Susan Collins. His platform emphasizes progressive and populist policies focused on the working class, including support for affordable housing, universal healthcare through Medicare for All, expanded veterans’ benefits, and higher taxes on billionaires and large corporations. His campaign has received significant national attention, and has drawn comparisons to that of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
In 2018, Platner returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, for about six months as a State Department security contractor with Constellis, the private military company formerly known as Blackwater.[14][7][15] He returned to Maine the same year, saying he quickly grew more disillusioned with the military and what he called fraudulent funneling of taxpayer money to private defense companies.[9][6]
IDK dude. I get your point, and it’s a little confusing how it took him four tours and a stint with Blackwater to become disillusioned, but I wouldn’t automatically start up the “Bernie is a Zionist” purity testing against him quite yet.
Personally, he’s got a ton of red flags that I see. Even this campaign ad of his where he’s saying don’t shame the old lady (who was being a bigot when he defended her). He’s a populist, who somehow has enough funding and cache to make it on to all of the national shows 18 months before the election even happens (he showed up six months ago). He’s a multi-tour Afghanistan vet, who went back there working for blackwater. He went to George washington university, which means he isn’t an outsider like he claims.
Even his anti-oligarchy message is so vague that you could sub in Trump’s ‘anti-elite’ messaging from the 2016 run and it would fit right in.
Maybe he is legit, but I need to see far more than what he has put out to believe any of it. That one quote from the article about ‘ending the Maine primary right now, we’ve got our guy’ sounds fishy as fuck to me. I know Graham wasn’t the one who said that, but again, I see a giant red flag that says people with money are pushing to have this guy anointed as the candidate before anyone else has even joined the race.
Even his anti-oligarchy message is so vague that you could sub in Trump’s ‘anti-elite’ messaging from the 2016 run and it would fit right in.
“including support for affordable housing, universal healthcare through Medicare for All, expanded veterans’ benefits, and higher taxes on billionaires and large corporations”
I see a giant red flag that says people with money are pushing to have this guy anointed as the candidate before anyone else has even joined the race
Like I said, maybe. They could be evolving into where they run fake candidates that push specific progressive policies and then abandon them when they’re in office. I’m just saying that I never heard of the guy before now, and no one that I know of is pushing to cancel the primary or anything like that, and he’s pushing specific things which are good ideas, and I know that extensive nail biting purity testing about progressive candidates is a big pastime with a super toxic impact.
I hear you, and I’m not trying to say he definitely is or isn’t the guy. Honestly, I hope I’m wrong because it sure sounds like he’s going to be the candidate. But he has explicitly denied the progressive label, which again sounds exactly like the Fetterman run. Hopefully I’m just too cynical for my own good, but that guy hit me up for money via text back in June or whenever he first showed up, which means he already had access to ActBlue info at that time.
