PORTLAND, Maine — Before Graham Platner dove into the meat of his speech at the Maine Democratic Party Convention Saturday night, where he said it is “very odd but deeply humbling” to be the “presumptive nominee” for Senate, he first thanked his former opponent, Gov. Janet Mills.
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A smattering of party delegates rose to their feet and applauded.
Jens Dill was one of them. A 72-year-old retired software engineer from Winthrop, he had long been behind Platner in the primary ahead of a tough race against GOP Sen. Susan Collins. But Dills still wanted to acknowledge Mills’ run.
“She gave [Platner] enough challenge to get his campaign off the ground and organized, and she stepped down when she saw that it was time,” Dill said. “And she sent a message to Susan Collins: This guy knocked me out of the race. You’re next.”
That eagerness to look ahead to the November election was palpable at the biennial party meeting on the Portland waterfront, according to interviews with two dozen Democratic delegates. In the last week, they have watched a high-profile primary evaporate in the wake of Mills’ Thursday announcement that she was dropping out, after struggling with fundraising and a surging Platner.
They often greeted questions about Mills’ abrupt exit from the race with a literal exhale.
“Relief,” Micki Colquhoun, a 74-year-old retiree from Camden, said of her reaction to Mills’ move.
A Platner supporter, Colquhoun called a good friend who had been backing Mills upon hearing the news. She had been encouraging her friend to watch Platner’s recent interview with comedian and podcast host Jon Stewart.
“I called him, and I said, ‘Now, will you watch it?’ He said, ‘Of course,’” Colquhoun recalled.
Some holdouts
But not everyone was so eager to give Platner, a military veteran and oyster farmer, another look.
“He’s got a lot of baggage,” said Bettie Harris-Howard, a 76-year-old retired nursing administrator from Winthrop. She thought Platner’s convention speech was filled with empty platitudes, and she was not sure if she would even vote in November.
“I think Susan Collins is probably going to take it anyway,” said Harris-Howard, noting that the Republican Party would “do everything they can” to boost the longtime senator. She was also concerned Platner might still be struggling with his time in combat.
An Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, Platner has attributed a slew of controversial social media posts from his past to post-traumatic stress. The comments include Platner downplaying sexual assault and criticizing police and rural Americans.
Republicans are already attacking Platner for those comments, and they’re planning to spend tens of millions of dollars on the race.
A GOP super PAC, Pine Tree Results PAC, launched an ad earlier this week, prior to Mills’ exit, highlighting Platner’s social media posts and his tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol. Platner has said he was not aware of the Nazi connection and has since covered it up.
Platner encouraged former Mills supporters who may be skeptical of his past to ask him about it at one of his many town halls. He does still have to win the primary on June 9 to become the party’s nominee, and another candidate, former state government official David Costello, remains in the race.
“It’s up to people to believe whether or not I’ve changed. I mean, I can’t force anyone to believe anything,” Platner told NBC News in a brief interview after a rally with union members on Friday. “What I will say is, if you look at the life that I’ve been living, if you look at this campaign, if you look at the most recent years of my existence, it very much reflects who I am today. And yeah, I hope that — I hope that we can still get their support.”
Platner made a thinly veiled reference to those controversies during his speech on Saturday night.
“I’m the young man who came back with the weight of forever wars and the alienation and the darkness that came with it, because I am one of the lucky ones,” Platner said. “I am the man who found my way home, found my way to making a living on the sea, to community and to love. This state raised me, and this state saved me.”
Later, Platner also said, “While the powers that be have done everything they can to stop us, this state has chosen to believe in redemption.”
Moving forward
Platner drew some of the loudest cheers of his speech when he pivoted to Collins, saying, “Susan’s charade is over.”
Platner believes his campaign’s grassroots operation — which includes 15,000 volunteers and a successful small-dollar fundraising operation — could be a difference-maker for Democrats this year.
“There are a lot of folks in the kind of more establishment Democrat world that are really gun shy around Collins. They’ve gotten their hopes up before, they’ve been let down before,” Platner said in the Friday interview.
“We are doing something entirely different, and that’s why we’re gonna win,” Platner later added.
Many Democrats at the party convention were optimistic that this could be the year they finally win.
“I think Graham focusing on the ground game is really important,” Kerri Van Kirk, a 35-year-old business coach from Bristol, who said she believes Platner can win. “He’s inspiring a lot of people to volunteer, to organize, and I don’t think anybody has had that level of enthusiasm.”
Platner supporters were also hopeful that Democratic Party leaders would learn from his rise, and some chided leaders who backed Mills for appearing to abandon the governor.
Mills had endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, but no outside groups spent to boost Mills on the airwaves.
“I feel like they didn’t come through for her,” said Cathleen Allen, a 63-year-old retired teacher from Bethel. She had been backing Platner in the primary because “he says what he’s thinking.”
Schumer and Platner spoke Thursday night after Mills ended her campaign.
“He called, he congratulated us on a well-run race,” Platner told NBC News. “And then nothing brings people together like the need to unseat Susan Collins. So we had a very nice conversation about doing just that.”
Democratic leaders’ decision to back Mills in the primary did turn off some primary voters, like Matt Camuso, a 31-year-old Rockport resident who works at a technology company. He described Schumer’s endorsement as the “kiss of death” for Mills’ campaign.
“It does make me wonder sometimes, did they actually talk to many Maine people about their perception of the Democratic Party nationally and here at the state level?” Camuso said.
“I get it, there’s a lot of fears around him,” Camuso said of Platner. “He had controversies that a lot of candidates don’t. But myself, who has gone through a lot of transformations in my life, I really think he’s genuine.”
Camuso said Democratic leaders “seem like a mess” saying they focus more on platitudes than policies to help average Americans, and many candidates “don’t seem like everyday people.”
Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, the party’s 2024 vice presidential nominee, acknowledged Democrats’ struggles, likening those issues in a Saturday speech at the convention to herding “angry cats.”
“I think the lesson here is, is that these are healthy,” Walz told NBC News when asked about the Senate primary. “The Democratic Party is willing to have discussions amongst themselves. They do not follow a leader blindly, and I think it makes us stronger.”
Walz clarified that he was not referring to Trump, not Schumer. Walz also said he had met Platner and he was glad he was in the race.
“He’s obviously capturing some energy. And when you do that, you’re gonna catch some incoming fire,” Walz said, expressing confidence that Collins would lose in November.
“I think Maine is done,” Walz said.
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