Campaigns for the 2026 midterm elections are officially kicking off and candidates are starting to roll out their intro bios and platforms. One ad in particular, went viral online. It featured Graham Platner, a marine and army veteran and oyster farmer. He’s running for U.S. Senate in Maine to unseat five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins. He joins WITHpod to talk about his working class background, fault lines within the Democratic Party and more.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
(Music playing)
Graham Platner: There are legacies that we have to draw on in this country, legacies like the labor movement, legacies like the civil rights movement. These are legacies that show that when people are organized, when people have strategy, when people are willing to fight for important things, build power and use that power to get what they need, we can get good things. And we need to get back to drawing for those legacies. And I think that that’s really the way forward
(Music playing)
Chris Hayes: Hello. And welcome to “Why Is This Happening?” with me, your host, Chris Hayes. Well, it’s getting towards fall of 2025, which means the official start of the 2026 midterm elections. We’ve started to see candidates with their initial bio videos announcing that they’re considering, or they’re running for office. There’s a bunch that have come through.
And one candidate in particular really kind of lit the internet by storm with a few introductory kind of bio ads. He is in Maine, where he’s going to be trying to win the democratic nomination to take on incumbent Republican Susan Collins. I want to just play you a little bit of one of these ads that really grab people’s attention. Take a listen.
(Begin ad)
(Music playing)
Graham Platner: When I tell people around here that I’m running for Senate, sometimes the initial reaction is (BLEEP) what the fuck, but when I tell them why I’m doing it, because I truly do believe that we can build a system that is going to represent working people. The number one response has been well, thank God somebody’s going to do it. You’re opposed to fight for the things you love. This is our home.
(End ad)
Chris Hayes: The ad is from Graham Platner, who’s a Marine and U.S. Army veteran, also an oyster farmer and is running to be the U.S. Senator from Maine. That ad shows Graham in a oyster boat with sort of full kit on. At various points in other ads, he’s diving for oysters. He’s bringing oysters up. He’s walking on the beach with his dog. He’s swinging kettle bells.
It was like something about it kind of landed like a bomb on social media, partly because it sort of ran together a whole bunch of different threads that had been the discourse, but we’re an actual human being, an actual guy, an actual Manor named Graham Platner, who is my guest today “Why Is This Happening?” Graham, welcome to the program.
(Music playing)
Graham Platner: Thanks a lot, Chris. I appreciate it.
Chris Hayes:One thing you got going for, you got a real deep voice, which I think is part, was part of what made that made that, uh, work so well.
Graham Platner: Yeah, I know. I mean, this is one of these weird things. I’m fairly sure of like managed to get where I have in life, 90 percent of it is just the fact that I have a deep voice. And, I can’t take credit for that, it’s my father’s voice. But, you know, it’s all right. I’m very fortunate to have that, I would say.
Chris Hayes: So, tell me a little bit, I want to start with the video because the video really did take off. Were you surprised? How did you realize that it was sort of having the kind of escape velocity that it was having?
Graham Platner: Yeah, I mean, we worked very hard on the launch. We spent about two weeks working incredibly hard getting stuff lined up, getting the video made. This all happened relatively quickly. Eight weeks ago, the idea that I was going to run for U.S. Senate was the furthest thing from anyone in my life’s mind, including myself. And yeah, we worked hard though, after we kind of decided we were going to do it, and we put a lot and we thought that we were going to have like a good launch day.
I was expecting it to be like, yeah, like it would be cool. I have friends of mine were going to text me and say, hey man, that’s cool. And by, I don’t know, 11 o’clock in the morning, noon that day, it was last Tuesday. I mean, essentially, like everybody I’ve ever met is blowing up my phone. People are flipping out. People are calling me telling me that be like, what is going on? I’m like, ah, wow.
I mean, I knew it was going to, I felt very confident that it was going to land mostly because like the messaging is frankly stuff that I think everybody that I interact with down here in the like normal world. These are all things a lot of folks have been like talking about essentially daily for at least a year, if not longer.
And so, I mean, I was confident that it was going to catch on. I still am entirely unprepared. Like, at least emotionally and personally for this. I mean a week ago was very much just a guy that lived in Eastern Hancock County in Eastern Maine. In next week I’ll be speaking on stage with Bernie Sanders and that feels wild to me. I wake up each morning kind of feeling like I’m living in somebody else’s life.
Chris Hayes: Can you take me through go, let’s go back eight weeks to when it was the furthest thing from your mind that you were going to run for U.S. Senate. What were you doing, like, take me through your daily life before this. Like what are you doing? What’s your home life? What’s your routine?
Graham Platner: Yeah. Uh, I have a small oyster farm. I started it about eight to nine years ago. My wife and I live essentially a very simple life. She was a school teacher until last year. She became kind of the business manager for the farm and she, myself, my business partner, we work very hard. We farm oysters. I’m a diver as well. I have a small dive business finding moorings and things out in the bay.
And so, yeah, I mean, that was pretty much. I’ve been very involved in like local stuff. I mean, I’ve been the chair of the planning board in my town for about six years. I’m the harbor master. I’ve been involved in some local community organizing.
Chris Hayes: That’s a big deal harbor master.
Graham Platner: Well, it is except that I work in a harbor with four working boats, including myself, we all know each other. It’s very small. It’s very small harbor. I mostly just make sure we all pay our mourning fees. That was kind of where things have been. And the summer for us is extremely busy because oyster farming in Maine summer is pretty much your season.
So, we were very busy going from events to events, doing tours, farming oysters, to kind of like, that’s sort like that’s what we do. And I was approached by some friends I’ve made over the years through community, organizing some friends and labor. And they essentially pitched me on this idea that this race is unique opening to inject the kind of like working class populism back into both main politics, and because of the visibility of this race, national politics.
And I was like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I have those exact same thoughts. You guys should find somebody to do it. And they were like, yeah, we think we have. And my wife and I were effectively like, well, this is impossible. We work very hard. We don’t make a lot of money. I mean, we very much are just pretty normal working-class folks.
In Senate campaigns are, as you probably know, well they require lots of resources and they require lots of time and energy. And we were afraid that we didn’t have that. They connected me. And then also through just the way my life has been, I had some friends who’ve worked campaigns elsewhere, and I began to think about it a little bit more seriously, talked to some other people about what it might look like.
And at that point, I had a few conversations with a few folks who were like, no, we think this actually has legs. We also have some friends who might be able to come in and help early on, on building out the structure that I’ve never run for office before, as The New York Times likes to point out.
And there’s, like in those conversations, I began to actually see what looked like a possible way to do this. And that happened about three and a half weeks ago. So, everything that’s happened since last Tuesday, we built that in two weeks. And, obviously, what has happened since Tuesday has given me an immense amount of faith and the people that I’ve spoken to and who have kind of helped support and coalesce this. We clearly have an excellent team. And it’s been quite the whirlwind because, again, I mean, this is not running for United States Senate was not a thing I used to wake up and aspire to. And here I am.
But I do firmly believe that we have reached a point where we need to do something entirely different. We need to run different types of campaigns. We need to run different types of candidates. And we really need to connect with frankly, this kind of like deep disillusionment in this deep anger at the system writ large.
And I was not seeing anything like that, not here, not in this race, which is really in the end, why my wife and I, after a lot of talking and essentially a week long panic attack, decided that if we believe in the things we believe, if we think that there is an opportunity to build a better world for working people, if there is a possibility that we can actually claw ourselves back from the edge of this kind of dark precipice, it feels like we’re on. If we believe that, then we have to do this. And so, we did.
Chris Hayes: What is your understanding, both in a kind of intellectual formation level and just on the ground level, like being in the harbor master and farming oysters and living in Maine and being, I think, a multi-generational Mainer of what the source of that disillusionment is.
Like, how were you articulate? What is the thing that is driving that anti-system view and how does it come to be? Why is it manifesting in Maine, particularly, around the people that you have known and grown up with.
Graham Platner: People in Maine? And I think nationally, but I’ll just use Maine as the example here. Working people, Republican or Democrat, Trump supporter, or progressive, if you go across this state and you ask people, do you think that you live in a system that is built for you? Do you think that there is a political structure that represents your interests? Not a single one of those people are going to tell you the answer is yes, not one. And they’re right.
They, like, they know in their bones that they live in a structure that is in many ways, built to strip them of wealth, strip them of dignity, strip them of time, strip them of like the ability to live the kinds of lives they would rather be living all for the benefit of those who already have wealth and power. Everybody knows this.
I mean, for this has been, I think one of my biggest frustrations for years at this point, is living in a small town where like a lot of my friends voted for Donald Trump. A lot of my neighbors voted for Donald Trump. And they voted for Trump because Trump at least told them that that was true. Trump told them that the system was screwing them.
Now, right-wing populism never has answers for this stuff. It always blames those most at risk. It otherizes people. I mean, in some ways it’s not even worth talking about, because we have so many historical context of how this functions that it’s, like, it almost seems silly to keep repeating it.
But that only works when there is no alternative answer. And it has felt like there has not been an alternative answer. It has felt like people were, it’s either you go down the dark path and you start to believe that the people that Trump or the Republicans are telling you are to blame is correct, or you just get disillusioned and you just walk away. And I know a lot of people that did that. I know a lot of independents, a lot of unenrolled voters in Maine who they’re done. They see a thing, right.
And they’re not politically disengaged. Like, they have disengaged because they were paying attention and they felt like they were seeing something that, in many ways, was like there was no way we were going to claw ourselves back from it and they focused locally. And that’s it.
Chris Hayes: I want to press on this because I think what you’re describing is sort of, it’s kind of the defining psychological or emotional experience that defines of our politics. I think that, like, that sense —
Graham Platner: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — of alienation or the sense of being left behind or not represented. Different people feel it for all kinds of different reasons.
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And I want to just get like a little more precise about, is this to you a material feeling?
Graham Planter: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Like, I literally can’t afford to buy a house in Maine. I can’t have a vacation. I can’t do all these things. And I see all these people come for the summer who seem to have nothing but money and that messes with my head. Is it a sort of cultural alienation? Like how, again, how do you understand it? Brass tax, like?
Graham Platner: Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, there’s an element of it. That my message will never get through to. I mean, there’s going to be an element, obviously, of like, kind of, more racist aggrieve, xenophobic aggrieve, that, I mean, that kind of stuff is going to be hard to.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: I mean, I don’t expect to get those people. But the weirdly enough, they’re like a lot of the folks I know who voted for Trump and even like display some of those views. When you talk to them, like, it’s clear that like they’ve gotten here because it’s materially based.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: Healthcare in Eastern Hancock County is actually collapsing as we speak. It’s not an exaggeration. It’s not like hyperbole. Like, we are down to two birthing centers in the entire area. People have to drive over an hour for healthcare.
And just recently the healthcare company that owns everything now, it’s all consolidated ownership. They’re in some fight with Anthem —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: — about not taking that health insurance, which like a ton of people around here have, which literally is leaving people with no healthcare options, not like bad ones, none of them. And the Medicaid and Medicare cuts that are coming down the pike which, frankly, are the only things that buoy a lot of these rural hospitals in the first place, we haven’t even seen that yet. That’s coming soon. It’s stuff like that. It’s that. It’s the lack of housing.
I mean, I could talk affordability crisis. I mean, everybody knows it’s everywhere. I mean, housing is unaffordable, if you can even find it. Same here. And it’s people see this stuff. And I do believe that many of the follow on reactions come from the material issues. And the reason I believe this, is when I talk to these people who, I will say, many of them are actual friends of mine, this is not like a random thing. I live in this town of a thousand people.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Graham Platner: If I was going to like not have Trump voters in my life, I wouldn’t be able to function. So like, when you talk to these folks, this is the stuff they talk about. We sit there and we all sit around and complain about how the healthcare system is built to enrich people and not to provide services. We talk about how we have a housing system that is essentially like pricing out every working class person in the state.
We talk about foreign wars and American money being spent overseas and vast sums while Americans don’t seem to get anything out of it. These are the conversations I have on a pretty regular basis and had long before I decided to run for Senate.
So to me like that’s the crux of it. It is material. And that’s also why like, I mean, I, again, talk to people about this and I bring up Medicare for All. I bring up the fact that I get all my healthcare through the VA and that’s good. And that allows me to live the life I live, gives me the freedom to do something like start a business. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I didn’t get VA healthcare.
I talk about that in people, who seemingly would be on the opposite side, say things like, yeah, why don’t we have universal healthcare? That does seem like a really good system. But like nobody’s ever really talked to them about it. It’s just been the sort of, for those of us who are like really politically connected and pay attention and do all of this, yeah. I mean, of course, we’ve heard these things.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Graham Platner: But for a lot of folks, you know, this is not a thing that gets brought up and that’s our fault, in my opinion. I mean, I feel like that’s the, we need to be out there connecting with working class people on big structural changes that are going to improve the lives of working class people. I mean, and I have not seen that. And I think the reaction thus far to this campaign mostly stems from that.
(Music playing)
Chris Hayes: More of our conversation after this quick break.
(Break)
Chris Hayes: Let me ask a somewhat personal question if you don’t mind answering it.
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Because one of the obstacles for one of the things that happens in the modern, you reference this in the beginning. So the modern campaign system is so dependent on raising big sums of money. So it’s a question of, well, when they’re recruiting candidates who can raise money, which tends to be people who have money and know people who have money.
And then there’s actually just like a logistical question if you’re a working class person, or even just a middle class person, say you’re a nurse, or you’re a teacher, like, how would you run for office? Running for office kind of a full time job.
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: You got to go teach your class or be a nurse or whatever it is. Like in that very concrete way. Like, how are you going to make this work? Like, is there a seasonality to the oyster farm that’s going to allow you, or like, how’s that going to work?
Graham Platner: There’s a little bit of an irony here that I spent about eight or nine years building my business very slowly, very, so we sustainably to make sure that we didn’t take on too much debt to make sure that we owned everything.
And this year was the year where it was all working. And I was like, oh my God, all the plans came to fruition. And I now get to hand it off to my business partner and say, hey man, it’s yours for the foreseeable future. And I’m lucky that I have a business partner who is my age is fit, is also very, very engaged with aquaculture, loves the work.
And also, this is going to sound a little goofy, but like we just live in an incredibly supportive community. And when I started kind of throwing this idea around neighbors, friends, I mean, people, frankly, who do not have my politics, like came out of the woodwork being like, yeah, this needs to happen. And we’re all going to like help out in whatever way it’s going to take to make sure it does.
And so, like, if there’s like a weird little moment where like my underlying politics, which is based on community, which is based on building organization and building networking and relationships within your community and using that to build power, in some very quirky way is also what’s allowing us to even do this. What’s allowing us to make this run, which I guess in some way I hadn’t actually thought about until right now, but it kind of, I think, gives a little bit of evidence that this might actually be able to work.
Chris Hayes: I saw a photo of you, I think, in your high school yearbook where you were like holding up a sheet of paper with like a few, sort of like international causes. I mean, righteous ones, to be clear. But it made me, I was like, oh, okay. So I really, I’m interested about how this guy got, like, there’s that high school yearbook photo. There’s a guy who is in the service for many years, oyster farmer, like, tell me about your political formation. How would you describe how you got the politics you have? And how would you describe those politics?
Graham Platner: In high school, I mean, I was definitely I was an angsty young man, as I think many young American men can be. I definitely was. I looked for things to believe in. I read far too much Hemingway and that was probably unhealthy in hindsight.
I really, I like I, at that time in my life, was very much drawn to causes, drawn to things that I felt like were just, and bigger than myself and I wanted to like take part in it. And also, I was, you know, I have to be frank, I was also a high school kid in Maine. I mean, it was kind of boring. There wasn’t much go, I mean, you know, I saw a big world. I saw a long history. I saw all kinds of like big, important, exciting things. And there was something in me that just like, wanted to take part.
I guess I’ve always had a pretty deep sense of like justice and injustice. I mean, I’ve always looked at things that I felt to be unjust or unequal or seeing people who look like they’re being abused, or exploited, or oppressed. And I have always felt some kind of, like, aversion to that. I’ve wanted to try to make it better, I guess.
But you know, so I mean, like I, you know, I protested the war in Iraq. I thought it was a bad idea for a whole myriad of reasons. I was right. I was also 18. And the fact that to this day, people are like it was really confusing back then. I’m like, was it? I was 18. It seemed not confusing to me. And I was not that bright back then, so.
But I also had this element of, I mean, I wanted adventures and I did feel like a call to service, a call to something bigger. And, you know, in the United States, the U.S. military, as a young man, I mean, that’s a place. That’s a place for adventures. That’s a place for belonging to something bigger than yourself. It’s a place for connecting with that kind of stuff.
And so, after high school I joined Marine Corps. And, obviously, deployed overseas. I was in the infantry. Wound up after that, got out briefly felt like I was kind of missing out. A lot of my friends were still deploying this around 2008. So I reenlisted into the army, did another deployment in the army.
And throughout all of that, like I went into the war in Iraq being pretty cynical and skeptical of the whole thing, but I had this like fantasy that I would be able to do good. That like, that if I was out there on the cutting edge of bad policy, that like you could inject decency in to an indecent place, if you are the one who’s like out there where the bad stuff’s happening. That is true to an extent. It also, within large, massive failed policies that, frankly, I think in many ways weren’t even attempting to do what we thought we were trying to do, you know, it’s what are you going to do? You get like one person inside of this whole miserable, horrific mess.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: And I got very disillusioned and that, I think, in many ways made me incredibly critical of American foreign policy, which then, in many ways made me start to question, I would say, a lot of the, just the structures that we live within.
A friend of mine, a long time ago, this was actually not too long after I got back from Afghanistan. I was really kind of burned out, very angry, very disillusioned. And we were talking one day and I was just like, you know, it’s just like, I’d be like, this is my fourth tour. We’re doing the same stuff. Like, I’ve been doing this for like years now. I mean, I started in Iraq in ‘05. It’s not like 2012 and I’m coming, and like I’m looking at Afghanistan and, like, we’re making the same exact mistakes.
Like I just I’m literally confused. And my buddy was like, that’s because you think it’s trying to do something that it’s not. He’s like, what you got to do is you got to reframe the question. You got to ask yourself, what is the thing we are trying to do if this is the outcome we’re getting? And I started to take that critique to effectively everything I looked at. And in many ways it’s kind of, it has created this what, I would say, I’m just very critical of much, many of the structures that we live within.
I think we live in a world that is shaped by policy. I think the world that we live in is not organic. I don’t think it’s natural. I don’t think it has to be like this. All the outcomes we have are the outcomes of policy decisions that we choose to enforce or not enforce.
And when you start asking, well, like what other questions you’d have to ask to get the outcomes we have currently. The answer starts to mostly look like we’re just figuring out how to steal as much money and time from working people and give it to the ultra-wealthy. And that’s pretty much where I’ve landed.
Chris Hayes: I’m going to ask you a question that will get you in trouble, which is, did you like the Marines or the Army more?
Graham Platner: No. Marine Corps. I’ve just, I mean, I’ve —
Chris Hayes: Not even a second’s hesitation.
Graham Platner: No, I mean the Marine Corps is a cults and I was —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: — inducted into the cult at 19. I have, I think, four Marine Corps tattoos. I don’t have a single U.S. Army tattoo.
Chris Hayes: Okay. There you go.
Graham Platner: Look, I love the Army. I had an excellent time in the Army. I was in a very spectacular, I was in several spectacular units in the Army and I’m glad I got to do it. Marine Corps got me first. They got me young. And that’s where the loyalties will always lie, at least on that front.
Chris Hayes: Given the fact that you’ve, you know, you’ve served in two of the services and worn the uniform for many years and deployments. I am curious what you think of watching the spectacle of U.S. servicemembers with long guns –
Graham Planter: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — on the streets of American cities, being there to sort of support deportations or to sort of, and now, in safety vests, picking up trash on the National Mall, which seems like a kind (inaudible) and absurd with the whole thing.
Graham Platner: To be fair, in my experience with the infantry, sometimes that’s what you do. You do a lot of trash picking up, so.
Chris Hayes: That’s right. Yes, exactly. What do you make of these, this use of the military for this purpose?
Graham Platner: Oh, it’s disgusting. It’s un-American. I honestly, I feel really bad for those men and women who are out there doing that. Like, I know what it’s like to be in uniform and tasked to go do things that you kind of don’t agree with, or actually, let me rephrase, really don’t agree with.
Chris Hayes: Really don’t. Yeah.
Graham Platner: There is like a, I think there is a bit of like a civilian fantasy that like either, like, well, you can always disobey unlawful orders. And you’re like, yeah, I mean, you can. But like go hang out within a military unit for an extended period of time and tell me how easy that’s actually going to be.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: It’s hard, especially when you’re young, and especially when you’re just kind of, like, you’re not certain of yourself. You’re not certain of like your role in these things. I mean, it’s asking a lot of young people to like follow their hearts. And I don’t think it is a, frankly, I don’t think it’s a feasible long-term strategy to just hope that everybody’s going to wind up doing the right thing. History tends to show that that’s not always the case.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: Like, and which is terrifying. And I mean, for me, that’s the scary part. Like, I have the utmost confidence in —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: — the people in the United States military to follow lawful orders, to do the right thing. I also have spent enough time in uniform to know that, like, that gets very complicated very quickly when civilian leadership —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: — is the one giving you the orders. It’s one thing —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: — if you’ve got like a military officer giving you a very clearly illegal order, and you can say things like, I’m not going to do that. Sure. Maybe. It’s another thing when it’s like the actual apparatus that you have kind of sworn an oath to. I mean, everybody likes to point out, we swear oath to the Constitution. That is true.
Structurally, you know, also you do things when the civilian leadership of this country tells you to do them and it terrifies me, and it leaves me with, honestly, like a real, it’s depressing.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: Yeah. I don’t really know how else to say it.
Chris Hayes: I know you were referencing earlier, you know, the fact that, you know, you’re living in a town with, you know, your neighbors are, you know, I’m sure they run the gamut ideologically. And also —
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: — I think one of the points you’re alluding to, which I think is really important to remember is that, like, people don’t fit into easy and neat categories.
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And, you know, I’ve known this from being a reporter, and also, you know, working with people in politics that like every individual’s politics are just infinitely weird and sort of cross —
Graham Platner: Yes.
Chris Hayes: — pressured and self-contradictory.
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: And actually when you actually start going on people, it’s like, no one’s fitting into these neat categories. Right? But, like, there are going to be things that people that you like that you’re friends with, that you respect that you want votes from that you and they are going to disagree on.
Graham Platner: Absolutely.
Chris Hayes: And I’m sure that’s a thing that you’ve, that’s happened a lot in your life. I’m not telling you anything that isn’t. But when you’re campaigning, there’s a question of like, I’m sure there are people in your town who are like, I don’t think trans girls should be playing, you know, in sports in schools. And I’m sure people feel that way.
But you’re going to have to, like, take a vote on that. Or you’re going to have to have a campaign platform. I’m like, I oppose President Trump’s EO on this.
Graham Platner: Yes.
Chris Hayes: I think that’s wrong. There are folks who think, you know, there’s too many immigrants and we got to deport a lot of folks. And I don’t know where you are on that. But like, what do you say to people? What are you going to say on this campaign about those things, where there’s going to be Mainers who don’t see eye to eye with you, and maybe you say I’m a vessel for them and I represent them. Or you say, here’s where I stand. Like, talk me through that.
Graham Platner:These are not new conversations for me, for the record.
Chris Hayes: Totally. No, I know that.
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: Which would, I mean like, but like that’s, but in some ways that makes all this like sort of easy. Where I stand all this stuff is this my, like, I believe equality is equality. I believe that the progressive wins that we have made for people to live the lives they want to live and the bodies they want to live in. No steps back on that kind of thing. And I believe that because that’s what I personally believe.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: I also know, for a fact, that when you just say that, and then you start talking about the fact that the reason everybody’s lives suck is because the hospitals are closing. That’s where the conversation goes. And that’s what you talk about. I’ve had that conversation a million times.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: My theory is this. There’s a lot of nuanced conversations around a whole bunch of topics in this country that we will all get to expend an immense amount of energy talking about once everybody has healthcare. Once everybody has healthcare, I am happy to expend all of my wind talking about these other things. Until that day comes, until everybody can go to a hospital and get the care that they need to live the type of life that they want to live to get the type of dignity and fulfillment out of life. Once people don’t have to worry about over 50 percent of their income going to rent. Once we’re past that, I’m happy to talk about all that.
Right now, down here in the real world, those two things, especially, are destroying people’s lives. And that’s not like a, it’s not hyperbole. It’s not a talking point. It’s not a campaign slogan. It’s actually true.
And people are feeling it. And they’re going to be feeling it even worse very soon. So, I’m of the opinion that you don’t run away from your stances. You don’t have to back away from anything. Be very clear, be upfront, it’s on, I mean, you go read my policy platform. It’s on the website. It’s not hiding anything.
I also think that we can hash all that out in the better version of this world we live in, where people don’t have to worry about like a broken toe destroying them financially for the rest of their lives.
Chris Hayes: You’re trying to take on Susan Collins, who’s, of course, the incumbent Republican from your state, who she’s an interesting character, and I would say in two ways. One is that, she 100 percent is a Zion of an older version of the kind of country club Republican Party. You know, there’s not a working class bone, her body, to be honest.
I mean, I’m not even, that’s not an insult. That’s just like a descriptive, you know, this is just who this person is, who her family is, the life she’s lived. She is from the kind of Gentry, you know, and from a kind of gentile old, you know, version of that Northeastern Republican party, which puts her a little out of step with both the state and also the modern Republican Party.
She’s also a pretty deft and adept politician. I mean, she has navigated a whole bunch of stuff, you know, when you look at the math and you think, well, she’s a Republican. The Democrats win this state over and over what’s going on. She’s kind of knows what she’s doing in some ways.
What do you think her vulnerability is this time around? Like, why can you beat her when other people have tried very hard and raised a lot of money and haven’t?
Graham Platner: Two major reasons. The first one is that Susan Collins has been there for now coming up on almost 30 years. In those 30 years, things have gotten materially worse for working Mainers across the board. So, there is just an element of, clearly whatever this is, has not been working. And just at a baseline, we need to be doing something else.
The other thing is that, because over those 30 years, things have gotten worse for people. She actually hasn’t brought much improvement broadly to the state. She’s done things for industries. She’s brought money in for certain projects. I mean, I will not take that away from her. I’ll say that. Also should have brought in more. Should have fought for bigger things. Should have gotten people more. And if had we, then maybe we wouldn’t be living inside of a collapsing healthcare system.
Because this has been going on for so long, there is an element of her charade that is just no longer working. I think even up until 2020 it was still working. There was still a lot of Democrats in Maine that were going to vote for Susan Collins. Those days are over.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: There were a lot of independents in Maine who were going to vote for Susan Collins. She might still have some, but she doesn’t have nearly as many as she did. And more importantly, though, there are now a lot of Republicans in Maine that don’t want to vote for Susan Collins because they see her as a tool of the establishment. They see her as part of the political elite. And the populism that exists inside of the Republican Party right now is entirely at odds with her career.
I think that makes her uniquely vulnerable. I also think that that’s why a campaign that is, essentially, focused on building a working-class movement within the state of Maine is the most guaranteed to win. Like, I don’t think that we’re going to just beat Susan Collins.
I feel pretty confident that we’re going to be able to trounce Susan Collins, because I know we can get Democrats. We’re going to get a lot of unenrolled, a lot of independents who sat the last one out, and we’re also going to get not a lot, but we’re going to get some Republicans, some people who voted for Donald Trump because they wanted the system to change and they’re not going to get that change. It’s not coming. And things are going to get worse.
We need to be there ready with an apparatus, ready to explain to people in very clear material ways why they have found themselves in, the straits that they are in, the types of policies that we’re going to go fight for to improve them. And why coming back in to a more like broad-based working class coalition is the only way that we’re going to be able to build enough power to get the things that people down here actually need.
That’s why I think it’s going to work. And that’s why I think she’s far more vulnerable now than she ever has been.
(Music playing)
Chris Hayes: We’ll be right back after we take this quick break.
(Break)
Chris Hayes: You know, money always is a huge deal in races for a bunch of different reasons. And, you know, you’re not someone who, I think has probably, my sense, is not a huge Rolodex of super rich folks. Maybe I’m wrong about that. And I don’t think you certainly don’t have the personal wealth to drop 20 million on this race.
Graham Platner: No.
Chris Hayes: But the need for that doesn’t go away. Right? So one of the things that’s interesting about that viral video, right, is, and this is something I’ve sort of talked and written about in my book and, is that attention and money can be kind of fungible between the two, right?
And if you grab people’s imagination, you grab their attention. If you look at Zohran Mandani in New York, where he didn’t have a ton of money and no big, huge, super-backed backers was able to raise a ton of money. And that was matched under the New York City, you know, Campaign Finance System. Like, I mean, what’s the plan here to build an edifice that can do the kind of thing you say?
Graham Platner: What we’ve been able to pull off since Tuesday is really the beginning of that. We have blown through fundraising goals. I’ll just say that. I mean, we had set what we felt were like some pretty aggressive targets. We’re way past it. Way past it. And that’s all with like individual donations. That’s all, any of this is.
I’m, obviously, not going to take corporate PAC money. We’re not taking APAC money. We’re not doing the super PAC thing. I mean, it just isn’t, it’s anathema to my politics. And I know that they’re going to be conversations, at some point, like someone is, I’m assuming, going to contact me and say, hey, you don’t have to fundraise. And I’m just going to have to be like, that’s not what this is. I’m not doing this —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Graham Platner: — to send me to the United States Senate. I’m doing this because I think that we need to send working people to the United States Senate who are going to represent working people. And one of my biggest critiques of this system is where money is in the process. And so, while, of course, we, I mean, we need to raise money. And we need to raise a lot of it. We also recognize that we’re not going to beat them with the money. Like, there’s just no way that we down here —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: — who have none of the money are going to be able to beat the people that have all of the money. We’re not going to be able to beat them with money. We are going to be to beat them with people. And if we can raise enough money to put together the apparatus to organize people, then we are off to the races. And then that’s, honestly, exactly what’s happening right now. I mean, that’s the structure that’s being built out currently. It’s the focus of this.
My background is not an electoral politics. My political background is in community organizing. I believe, and I’ve seen it work. I believe in the power of getting people, working people, organized in their communities and their workplaces. There are legacies that we have to draw on in this country, legacies like the labor movement, legacies like the civil rights movement.
These are legacies that show that when people are organized, when people have strategy, when people are willing to fight for important things, build power and use that power to get what they need, we can get good things and we need to get back to drawing from those legacies. And I think that that’s really the way forward.
Chris Hayes: How did you get involved in community organizing when you talk about that? Like, how did you get drawn into that? What do you mean when you say that? My dad was a community organizer, so I grew up around community organizing in the Bronx. That’s what my dad did my whole time growing up. That’s why I was born in the Bronx, ‘cause he was organizing there. Met my mom there, who’s from the Bronx. So tell me how you’re into it.
Graham Platner: Over the past couple of years, I’ve just sort of, again, I’m a big history buff. I’m a big student. I was a history major in college. I didn’t graduate, by the way. So, I’m sure somebody at some point’s going to love to point out, but I love history and I love reading about history. And what I was noticing is that like in this time, where we have so much kind of political friction and fear, that within my community there was like a real dearth of organizational capacity. There weren’t meetings that people could go to, even about just like local topics.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: Like, I looked around and I saw all these people I knew who were spooked, scared, angry, looking for something to do. And at the exact same time, there almost seemed like there was zero mechanism in place to leverage any of that. And I also, I don’t know if you’ve read Jane McAlevey, labor —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: Yeah. So, I read a bunch of Jane McAlevey books. And in that I was like, oh, I see, like, there is a legacy out of labor organizing that needs to be, that we can draw on. And you kind of take some of those tactics, some of that, those concepts of thinking about theories of power, thinking about just even like the actual nitty gritty of how do you like organize a meeting regularly that people can come to and just talk about what’s going on in their community. And from that you can start identifying problems and ways to deal with it.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: And so, that’s what myself and a few friends of mine did. And we built a pretty robust organizing network here in Eastern Hancock County, still exists. And we’re, I mean, I’ve kind of stepped away from it, actually, several months ago ‘cause I got busy with the oyster farm, so I couldn’t do it in the summertime.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Graham Platner: But it has remained. It has become robust, and it’s a really important thing. And so, that’s kind of how I got to it. It was just the sort of just looking around and having conversations with very close friends, who also began having, like, being like, why don’t we have anything? And then there was a moment where we were, like, I guess we just got to build it. And so, I guess in some ways we did.
Chris Hayes: Yeah. What do you like about oyster farming?
Graham Platner: Oh, everything. Oh, man. It’s the biggest, honestly, it’s the saddest part of this entire experience, that I have to step away from it for a bit. When I came back to Maine, after my deployments, after I went to college in D.C. for a little bit, I was struggling, struggled pretty hard for some time after I got back from my fourth tour.
And, yeah, I mean, it just kind of, I wasn’t a great place. It was very disillusioned. I was very angry, you know, all kinds of untreated stuff. I wasn’t getting any help from the VA back then. I felt pretty unmoored. I felt pretty lost.
And 2016, I came back to Maine. And, essentially, the moment I moved back to Maine things just started to get better. Like, I moved back to Maine and I immediately got VA care, ‘cause the Maine VA, unlike the one I was dealing with, in D.C., through no faults of the D.C. VA, by the way, it’s just underfunded and understaffed. I got here to Maine —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: — where the VA is not underfunded and understaffed. And it was great. So things start to fall in place. I start getting care. I start getting, like physical issues that have been bother me, I start dealing with them. I start feeling better mentally and physically.
And then this oyster thing falls into my lap. A friend of mine from child, or an old family friend had started this very small oyster farm, and he was looking for somebody to kind of get involved and take it over. So I did. Like, I really didn’t think it through at the time. It mostly just felt like the right thing to do, at that point in my life. And I loved it.
I mean, I get to work for myself. I work with my hands. I’m on the ocean. I work with the tides. I grow food. I grow food in a way that’s incredibly ecologically, sustainable and beneficial. I still have this like silly internal itch about misery because I was in the infantry and like working on the ocean, you still get some days that are brutal and not fun. And I like that part too.
And so, there’s like this, and it allowed me to like move back to my hometown and live right down the street from the house I grew up in and just get fully connected with my community, which I fell in love with. And like, it has brought me a sense of like fulfillment and satisfaction and grounding that, I don’t know, that I never dreamed that I could feel as good about my life as I do. Certainly, not back in like 2012, 2013, after I was just getting back from my last tour or my fourth infantry tour.
And all of that is just a, I don’t know, it’s like I’ve got a lot of emotion wrapped up in it, a whole sense of place. It’s home. I love the place that I’m from. The place that I’m from also grows spectacular oysters. So I’m really proud of that. I mean, there’s just like all this stuff that is just wrapped up in it and it’s, I mean, it’s walking away from that and handing it off to my business partner, for me, is like that’s the hardest part of all of this.
But I also have reached a point where I’ve been able to build an absolutely spectacular life because of the support I get from the VA. Without that support, I could never have built any of this.
Chris Hayes: That’s that to you, that’s the cornerstone, that you had that.
Graham Platner: That is the cornerstone. Like, the fact that I did not have to worry about health insurance. I did not have to worry about healthcare. I got to get care when I needed it to deal with problems so they wouldn’t get worse down the road.
The support I get from the VA is what allowed me to buy my house, put a roof over my head, pay my mortgage.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Graham Platner: Like, I got to, which, you know, this is the thing, it’s like everybody, there’s always these talks about freedom. You know, people always look talking about freedom in this country, and that support gave me the freedom to build and live a life that I love. Without it, I could not have had the freedom to do so.
And I just think that every American should have access to that freedom. I don’t think that you should have to go fight in stupid foreign wars and watch your friends die, just to like get the baseline of support that allows you to live the kind of life that you want to live.
Especially not in a society that has so much wealth and so many resources that we could easily do this. We just choose not to through I think, terrible policy. And that’s the core of it. That’s the core of it for me. I know that I’ve been able to, like as a small business owner, I’m always asked to go to these like conferences. They’re like, talk about how your small business succeeded. I was like, oh, I can tell you. The VA made me not have to worry about healthcare and housing. And that’s how. And if you don’t have that —
Chris Hayes: Right.
Graham Platner: — I don’t know. I don’t like, I can’t give you advice because if you don’t have that, it, I can imagine it sucks. And it’s hard.
Chris Hayes: You know, it’s funny. One of the things I’ve been, that is in interviewing small business owners, one of the things that always sort of comes up is that, you know, every small business is sort of irrational at some level. Like it’s like —
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: It’s like, it’s so difficult. The margins are so thin. People are so like, and even successful businesses. I mean, some restaurant, you know, that you love and it’s a hip and hot and blah, blah. And like, you talk to the owner and it’s like, they do, they’re going, they work 18 hours a day.
Graham Platner: Yeah.
Chris Hayes: Like, they’re taking so little, they’re everything is just like one hazard away from breaking. And healthcare is, obviously, a huge part of that. But it is amazing to me how much every small business is kind of an act of faith at some level.
Graham Platner: Totally.
Chris Hayes: That doesn’t actually make sense. Like, almost none of them make sense if you like write it out in a spreadsheet.
Graham Platner: I mean, look, people always ask me, they’re like so like, what, like, how does this work financially? I’m like, oh, it’s easy. I don’t add up my labor hours.
Chris Hayes: That’s right. Exactly.
Graham Platner: If I pretend that my work isn’t real, then it’s fine. If I added that up —
Chris Hayes: Right, that’s exactly.
Graham Platner: If I ever add that up and you’re like, oh God, this is terrible.
Chris Hayes: Right, right.
Graham Platner: But it’s my company.
Chris Hayes: Right. Right.
Graham Platner: So, I’ll never do the math. And so, I’ll never know.
Chris Hayes: Right. Right.
Graham Platner: But that’s the thing though, was like, I mean, this is really important to me because like, despite all of that work that most small business owners put in, despite the fact that people often walk away from these things at the end of the day, with a couple bucks in their pocket and everything else has gone to payroll, everything else has gone to overhead. Despite that fact, people do this day in and day out, and a lot of people will do it until their business is successful. And then they start another one.
Chris Hayes: Right.
Graham Platner: Which tells me that it isn’t just about the hard numbers. People want to build things.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: People really do want to work. They want to do things that bring them fulfillment and joy and feelings of satisfaction. And we need to live in a system that like incentivizes that kind of thing.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: That doesn’t strip that potential away from people by making them work two or three dead-end jobs, and then getting sucked into like hustle culture where they’re trying to work every moment of the day, mostly just to like bring in money for some, you know, private equity investor who owns the app they’re working off of.
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: Like, this is —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: Like, that’s not the way, like that’s stealing —
Chris Hayes: Yeah.
Graham Platner: — people’s potential away from them. And what we need to do is we need to like be giving people the resources to live up to their potential.
Chris Hayes: Graham Platner is a Marine and U.S. Army veteran. He’s an oyster farmer and he is a candidate running for U.S. Senate in Maine. What’s your website if you want to learn more about you?
Graham Platner: So if any of this sounds good, you’d like to support us, Grahamforsenate.com. And we can, obviously, we can use your money. We can also really use your volunteering. I mean, we want to build out an incredibly robust, frankly, movement in this. And so, every little bit counts for what we’re trying to do.
(Music playing)
Chris Hayes: All right. Well, it’s great to talk to you, man. I really enjoyed that.
Graham Platner: No, thanks. That goes both ways. I’m a huge fan.
Chris Hayes: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that.
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