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Graham Platner Was Left for Dead. So Why Is He Winning?
Read Zeteo’s interview with the oysterman and veteran about Trump’s ‘uniquely bad’ war in Iran, how he’s survived his tattoo scandal, and much more.
READ IN APP Graham Platner at a town hall in Ogunquit, Maine, on Oct. 22, 2025. Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters.
Many people assumed Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy was dead in October. Instead, the oyster farmer and veteran kept campaigning, and continued drawing overflow crowds to town halls all over Maine.
His Democratic opponent, Janet Mills, Maine’s current two-term governor, has led a quieter campaign, and with three months left in the primary, polls suggest Platner is in the lead. Recent surveys, including a poll released Monday, suggest Platner would be a stronger candidate to face incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins, too.
It was, of course, fair to expect Platner wouldn’t get past the news that he, for years, had a chest tattoo – dating back to his time in the Marines – that resembled a skull-and-crossbones symbol used by the Nazis, even after he apologized and got the tattoo covered up.
Months later, it’s clear the conventional wisdom about Platner’s demise was wrong. What’s happening in Maine, on the ground, is a fundamentally different story.
Zeteo spoke with Platner over the weekend about the state of the Senate race, after he led a protest outside Collins’s Portland office to speak out against her vote in favor of Donald Trump’s illegal war.
As part of our wide-ranging conversation, Platner discussed why Trump’s war in Iran is “uniquely bad,” how he survived his tattoo scandal, and why he thinks it won’t doom his campaign if he makes it to the general election. “Everybody in Maine knows about it already,” he says. Platner also shared why he’s sick of being compared to John Fetterman, and what he’d like to say to Ted Cruz. (Spoiler: It’s not kind, but certainly relatable.)
Below is our conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity:
You canceled two forums to hold a protest outside Susan Collins’s office today. Can you talk about that?
PLATNER: I’m very against the recent combat operations against Iran. I feel like it is being done because Donald Trump doesn’t want us to pay attention to the Epstein files, and it’s being done because [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu has wanted this war for 30 years. And we need to be aware that, while this is uniquely bad and Donald Trump is uniquely bad, one of the reasons this even happens in the first place is because Congress has entirely abdicated its power of war-making.
Susan Collins, who, by the way, voted to send me to Iraq, clearly has no interest in clawing any of that power back. She voted against the War Powers resolution. We wanted to show her that her constituents, the people of Maine, do not feel that this war is in any way, shape, or form in our interest, because it so clearly isn’t.
What do you think about Republicans’ claim that it’s not a war?
PLATNER: Fuck this. War is war. Dropping bombs on people, killing people, blowing up schools, killing 160 children, that is a war. When we use military force, we are making war. And it’s very ironic, too, that these are the people who took such pride in changing the name from Department of Defense to the “Department of War,” in this kind of fake macho bravado way. And then the first time they actually go and fight a war, they’re like, ‘Well, it’s not a war.’
You spoke today about “cowards who know nothing of war,” sitting in DC, cheering and clapping “like it’s a game.” We saw the Trump White House posting a series of memes, using footage from ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and ‘Call of Duty,’ to tout its war. As someone who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, what do you think about that?
PLATNER: It disgusts me. But it’s deeper than that. It just shows how fundamentally immature and childish these people are, and also how disconnected they are from reality. It’s a shame that they have power, because human beings right now are suffering. People are dying, and all because these morons – these insecure, childish morons – think that war is some kind of game that gives them some feeling of power to overcome their total masculine insecurity.
For those of us who’ve been in combat, serious combat, those of us who have been up close and personal with this stuff, it is very frustrating. I’ve been on text threads with guys I served with recently, and guys who are Republicans, by the way, some who voted for Trump. Everyone’s disgusted by this.
You were not always so adamantly anti-war. How did you arrive where you are now?
PLATNER: Weirdly enough, I’ve always been against what I think are stupid wars. I protested the war in Iraq. That being said, I certainly grew up [as] a young man who watched war movies. I watched ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and thought ‘I should go join the Marine Corps’ – which, by the way, a lot of us did. It’s ironic, because I watch it now and I’m like, ‘This is definitely an anti-war movie,’ but there is no such thing as an anti-war movie.
Maybe the most ever, though.
PLATNER: It is, but look. My era of Marines, we all watched ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ We all saw that and thought to ourselves, we should definitely join the Marine Corps.
And the one guy just couldn’t hack it.
PLATNER: Exactly. But there is no such thing as an anti-war movie, except maybe ‘Come and See.’ Everybody should watch ‘Come and See.’
What changed for me is I went to war. I’ve interacted with what happens when high explosives interacts with children and friends of mine. Once you see it, you touch it, you smell it, you emotionally have to engage with it, it ceases to make it a game. Something that was really important for me in Iraq, and then also in Afghanistan, was the recognition that all of these people that live in these places we’re conducting these wars, they are just also human beings. And you realize that we have brought this immense amount of suffering and fear and terror to their doorstep.
I enjoyed the infantry. I was good at it. I joined up. I wanted to fight, and I was sent off to do exactly that, and in many ways, I was good at it. And when you’re younger, you can still sort of justify it all. But as I got a little bit older, and really began to engage with the fact that those experiences were happening not in some kind of vacuum – it wasn’t like us versus the guys we were fighting. It was us versus the guys we’re fighting, in the midst of all of these human beings who are just trying to live their lives, and that is, I think, what really began to shift my thinking on it. I’ve said this multiple times: I’m not a pacifist. But I essentially, at this point, am anti-war. When it comes to nation-states waging war against each other, I rarely find a conflict where it seems like it’s benefiting normal people, but it always does seem to benefit those in power.
We’ve heard you compared to John Fetterman, right? I think that’s in part because you’ve had some of the same consultants that he had.
PLATNER: Yeah, and I think there’s an aesthetic comparison that people make.
You two seem to be diverging more and more… with him draped in the Israeli flag.
PLATNER: And now draped in the American flag. Look. John Fetterman has never seen a war. John Fetterman thinks war is funny, thinks it’s a game. He likes to stand up there and clap and cheer the stuff on. John Fetterman doesn’t care about Palestinians. John Fetterman is, in many ways, I would say, the antithesis of my politics. The comparisons have been frustrating the entire time, I will say, mostly because I’ve got a fairly clear position on these things, which is nothing like that man’s. I’ve also actually worked for a living. I’m hoping, who knows, maybe at some point, people will stop comparing me to John Fetterman, because it’s the ultimate frustration of this experience.
We’re about three months out here from the primary. Can you give me your thoughts on the state of the race?
PLATNER: The campaign we set out to build was a campaign that is very different from what most campaigns are supposed to look like. We set out to build a campaign focused around organizing, focused around the field component, focused around building a broad-based coalition – labor unions, community organizations – and bringing a lot of people in via electoral politics, and then connecting them with deeper organizing principles and skills. That is what we set out to do. That is what we are doing, and it is working, and it is absolutely succeeding. But I’ll be upfront. It doesn’t matter where the polling is. It doesn’t matter where the media is. This is what we set out to do – actually build power the old-fashioned way, and that is what we are doing. I’m very happy that it’s working. It’s working quite well. Obviously, we’re doing great in the polls. We’re doing great with fundraising. But that’s all kind of secondary, because the thing that we are trying to do, that is succeeding. That’s really what matters to me.
How do you take it home from here?
PLATNER: We just keep doing this. It’s a little funny. People often ask me, ‘OK, so let’s say you win the primary. How does it shift?’ In many ways, it kind of doesn’t. It’s gonna scale up, but it’s still the same thing. Because I am in this for the movement. And this is a long-term, power-building exercise. This is not me just wanting to go be a US senator. This is us using this race, using the institution of the Senate, using the power of the role of the US senator, to build power and advocate for working people again. That’s the point of it. But that is just the same project, essentially in every single context. And so we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing, which is going all over the state of Maine, talking to absolutely – I think today I have six or seven public events. It’s a lot. I do a lot of talking. My voice is hoarse often, and I don’t sleep much anymore. But that’s the only way this works.
Janet Mills has publicly committed to five debates. Are those happening?
PLATNER: We’re still figuring that out. I’m happy to do every candidate forum and every debate that gets put together. I think it’s going to be very good for the electorate in the primary to be able to engage with both of us as we explain the kinds of policies and the kind of vision of the future that we are trying to work toward. And so every opportunity I have to do that, I’m happy to take it.
We haven’t really heard that much from Mills on the issues. There’s actually no formal “issues” page on her website. And she’s not really doing the same level of public forums either. The campaigns feel quite different.
PLATNER: I think fundamentally, we are engaged in a different kind of politics. That’s really what it comes down to. And that’s good, because it’s gonna give the people of Maine, certainly in the Democratic primary, pretty distinct, different paths of which way they want to go. Obviously, I’m very hopeful that our kind of politics, our kind of campaign, this pathway, our vision of the future, the policies that we just are pretty diligent in laying out and discussing often, I hope that’s what people are going to want and vote for. We’ll know which way Democrats in Maine want to go, and honestly, that’s up to them.
Janet Mills has warned that you would be “mincemeat” for Republicans in a general election.
PLATNER: We’re up in the polls. We’re up in [many] consecutive polls, where we also beat Susan Collins. So yeah, the machine is turning on, and that’s fair, that’s what they do. Whoever [is the nominee] is gonna get accused of all kinds of wild stuff. I’ve expected that the whole time. Look, I’ll be honest. People used to shoot at me fairly often. The idea that I’m gonna be ‘mincemeat,’ and that I’m not gonna be able to hold up to the stress or something, is fairly laughable.
Mills recently mentioned the tattoo in a media advisory. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has started tweeting about it. There have not been TV ads with it. Do you feel like that’s going to change anything in the race?
PLATNER: No. I’ll tell you why I don’t think it’s going to. Because everybody in Maine knows about it already. We did this in October. I’ve been very, very happy to talk about it in many public spaces. Also, I will just be upfront: When people start seeing what it actually is, everybody I’ve talked to is like, ‘Yeah, that’s a skull and crossbones.’
Not a swastika.
PLATNER: Exactly. But the way it was reported on, though … I had a meeting in New York not that long ago with a number of Jewish leaders, we started talking about it, and when we started, somebody was like, ‘Wait a second. We thought you had a swastika.’ And I’m like, ‘No, man. That would be crazy.’ When I explain the actual story, pretty much everybody’s like, again, ‘That seems like an eminently reasonable thing.’
Plus, I’ll just be upfront: The more they talk about it, the more I get to talk about the fact that I got that because I was a combat Marine. That’s why I had that. Susan Collins voted to send me to Iraq. It was the fighting I took part in, in Iraq, that resulted in me and other machine gunners getting a skull-and-crossbones tattoo. If we want to continue talking about my military service, I’m more than happy to, but I don’t think it’s going to have the impact they are envisioning.
Is there anything you want to say to Ted Cruz today?
PLATNER: Yeah. Go fuck yourself.
You spoke about your campaign emphasizing its field program. Can you talk about the town halls? I’ve covered a bunch of them. They’ve all been pretty packed.
PLATNER: They continue to be. Every venue we go to, we’re always at capacity. We have to turn people away. It is absolutely because people want an accessible politics. I think one of the reasons people have been so disillusioned is that politics has become so inaccessible to regular human beings. So when you make it accessible, people want to engage. I’m fully convinced that folks aren’t apathetic. They’re just disillusioned and angry, and they feel like there’s a political system … it’s not even that it doesn’t represent them. It’s that they have no ability to even try to get it to represent them. They can’t even touch it. They can’t access it. They can’t access their [politicians]. We’ve turned into this world where you have to send an email or make a phone call, and then that’s it. Sometimes you get a form response. Most of the time, you don’t.
When I go out and put myself out there publicly, in very uncontrolled settings – that’s the other thing: We don’t screen questions, we don’t screen attendance. People just come, and people can ask me questions. I think that being accessible to the constituency that you are attempting to represent – it’s wild I’m going to say this because this seems like common sense – seems like a fairly important thing to do in a democratic system. I think the reason we’ve had such great turnout and good events is that’s what people are looking for.
And these days, people want to get engaged. There is an energy out there. These events we have, while they are a way of people having access to me, and me being able to field questions and hear from them, it’s an organizing tactic in and of itself. Because as they come together – I’ve said this for years: Solidarity cannot be explained. It must be felt. Standing on a picket line, going to a protest, being in a room with people who are learning how to organize, realizing that they have everything in common with each other. You’ve got to feel that. And that happens often in our town halls, and I think people leave not inspired by my words – they leave inspired by the feeling of being in a room with other people who also want to do something. Everybody’s been waiting for something to do, and it’s only together in those rooms that they begin to realize that there are other people in their communities who are interested and engaged in the same way they are. And we’re really proud of how many of our volunteers go off and essentially form their own community organizations locally. I’m not going to say it is the core of the campaign – but it absolutely has turned into one of the pillars, or one of the elements of our foundation, the town halls.
It seems like people are eager to actually be invited into the political process rather than just being told: ‘Go vote.’
PLATNER: And we’ve been told that for … I mean, the reason my politics have become the politics that it is, is that I was sick and tired of being told that my only input was voting. I’ve been voting my whole life, and things seem to get worse. So there’s a point where you’re like: ‘Well, that can’t be the only thing. Because if it is, we are screwed.’ And it isn’t. Of course it isn’t. But, in my opinion, it is only through organizing and power-building that you really begin to find these other things to do. And I think as people engage with it, they become more excited and more politically active. Americans want to be part of democracy. They want to be in a small-d democratic system. We’re all pining for it daily. And we’re trying very hard to build it, not just in word, but in practice.
Much of the Beltway media, and the online left – to the extent it exists on Twitter and Bluesky – left you for dead in October. That didn’t happen. Why do you think that didn’t happen? Why did you manage to not just keep going, but to get where you are now, ahead in the polls?
PLATNER: One is that Mainers, they generally understand bullshit when they see it. And I think a lot of people saw what happened in October. Also, I think a lot of it had to do with the timing. A lot of people were like: ‘Well, this guy’s been in the race, the governor announces, and then all the bad stories start, literally within 24 hours.’ I think a lot of people were just like, ‘I can see what that is.’ And then, the fact that I was just very willing to go out and talk about this stuff publicly and openly. We are used to a political system in which politicians, when confronted with things that may be detrimental to their campaign, everybody goes into damage-control mode and just clams up. I think a lot of folks, we hate that. We want real people. We want real people from the real world to represent us. And I’ll, anecdotally, say this. A lot of people have come up to me, in the months in between, who have said things like, ‘You know, I wasn’t really sure about you until they started coming after you.’ They’re like, ‘And then I realized, oh yeah, he must just be one of us, then.’ And they’re like, ‘Now I’m all in.’ That happens a lot these days.
You’re also probably not the first person to have a tattoo they regret.
PLATNER: I’ve had a lot of people also come up and whisper in my ear, ‘Yeah, I had a stupid tattoo once, too.’ I’m like, yeah, man. We all kind of grasp that.
Last question. We’re about to report, based on our conversations with people in and close to the Trump administration, that the president is getting dangerously close to sending troops to Iran. Everyone we’ve spoken to in the administration indicates that they’re sprinting in that direction, and that Trump has seemed increasingly receptive to people telling him he can’t achieve what he wants from the air, and that it’s possible to do this without Iran turning into an Iraq 2.0-style quagmire. What are your thoughts on that possibility?
PLATNER: If we put boots on the ground in Iran, we are very much inviting an Iraq-style quagmire. This is getting away from these people so quickly. They had no plan. They’re a bunch of incompetent children who thought this was going to be some kind of joke that was going to help them in the polls, or was going to protect Trump from us noticing that he’s in the Epstein files however many times he’s in the Epstein files. It is now completely getting away from them. If we put troops in, the genie’s out of the bottle at that point. I am very, very concerned about the future that we’re looking at if we start committing ground troops to a war in Iran.
Also, just from a professional perspective, what are we going to do? Contested amphibious invasions. We’re gonna do paratrooper drops? We went into Iraq primarily because we had troop buildups on the border in neighboring countries that had land access, but we don’t have land access from Afghanistan, and we don’t have land access from Iraq, and we don’t have the troops built up. I don’t even understand. I don’t want to be flippant, but I just don’t even understand, from a strategic and professional perspective, how they intend to do this. These people don’t know what they’re doing. They’re a bunch of incompetent morons. Sadly, a lot of people are going to pay the price in blood, and that’s a real, real shame.
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