#maine-politics

#maine-politics

A super PAC dedicated to reelecting Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine recently put nearly $2 million behind television and YouTube ads attacking likely Democratic candidate Graham Platner. The spots, which began airing more than a month before the June 9 Democratic primary, focus exclusively on decade-old personal social-media posts and a tattoo Platner got as a young man and has since covered up. There is no discussion of policy, voting records, or Platner's platform as a Marine veteran running as a working-class populist. Instead, the ads-focused on the theme "Who Is The Real Graham Platner?"-center entirely on personal attacks, financed largely by out-of-state billionaires and Republican-aligned "dark money" groups seeking to preserve Collins's seat and the GOP Senate majority.

Graham Platner has never run for elected office before. He's a war veteran, an oyster farmer, and now he's running in a Democratic primary to eventually unseat Senator Susan Collins of Maine. He's ahead in the polls, but he's also been criticized for Reddit comments from his past and recently covered up a tattoo that looks suspiciously like a Nazi symbol.

Across the bay from Bar Harbor lies the small town of Sullivan, Maine, population twelve hundred and nineteen. On August 16th, Graham Platner, the bearded, strawberry-blond co-owner of the Waukeag Neck Oyster Company, brought his Carolina Skiff over to the Sullivan Harbor launch. It was three days before a video titled "Platner for U.S. Senate" would drop, catapulting this local oyster farmer, harbormaster, and former marine onto the national stage.

"Running establishment candidates who are chosen or supported by the powers that be in D.C. - in Maine specifically - has been a total failure, certainly in attempts to unseat Susan Collins. It is time for us to try something new."

"We have an aging population, and a lot of people on lower income in that age range, and it's just an incredibly unfair burden to put on them," House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor) told WGME.

U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock granted Maine's request for a temporary restraining order, allowing federal funding from the USDA to be unfrozen.