Each and every few years, Democrats attempt to persuade themselves they’ve discovered the only – a candidate who can in the end talk fluent rural, who seems and sounds just like the electorate they’ve misplaced.
In 2024, that hope was once pinned on Tim Walz, the flannel-wearing, “Midwestern nice” governor whose small-town roots had been intended to unencumber the agricultural Midwest for a Harris–Walz victory.
It didn’t.
Now the ones expectancies have migrated to New England, onto Graham Platner – the tattooed veteran and oyster farmer from Maine who swears from the stump, wears sweatshirts as an alternative of fits, and, some consider, may well be the birthday party’s blue-collar savior towards Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent working her 6th marketing campaign for U.S. Senate.
I learn about rural politics and reside in rural Maine. I’m skeptical whether or not Platner can succeed in the independents and rural moderates Democrats want. However I additionally see why other people suppose he would possibly: He’s chatting with grievances which are actual, measurable and many years within the making.
Platner represents Democrats’ anxieties about category and geography – a projection of the authenticity they hope would possibly reconcile their nationwide logo with rural The united states. On paper, he’s the type of determine they believe can bridge the divide: a plainspoken Mainer.
However his tale cuts each tactics. He’s the grandson of a celebrated Big apple architect, his father is a legal professional and his mom is a restaurateur whose industry caters to summer time vacationers. He attended the elite Hotchkiss Faculty.
It’s a lifetime of silver spoons and salt air. That stress mirrors the Democratic birthday party itself, led and funded by means of city pros who’re increasingly more acutely aware of simply how a ways they strayed from their working-class roots.
If Platner is to be successful, he should bring together a coalition that expands past what the birthday party has change into – concentrated in city and coastal enclaves, financed nationally and culturally far away from a lot of rural The united states.
But Platner’s speedy hurdle isn’t rural Maine in any respect. It’s the Democratic number one, and the ones electorate don’t reside the place his marketing campaign imagery is about.
Crowd individuals at a city corridor assembly within the southern Maine city of Ogunquit pay attention to U.S. senatorial candidate Graham Platner on Oct. 22, 2025.
Sophie Park/Getty Photographs
Alternative zone
In 2024, just about 6 in 10 registered Democrats in Maine lived south of the state capital Augusta. That a part of the state would no longer represent an city city anyplace else within the U.S., however this can be a vastly other global than the only Platner is preventing for.
The birthday party’s gravitational heart sits in Cumberland and York counties: Larger Portland and the southern coastal strip. That citizens is extra skilled, prosperous and concrete than the state as an entire, clustered in Portland’s walkable neighborhoods, faculty cities corresponding to Brunswick and artsy coastal communities that swell with summer time vacationers.
Southern Maine – nearer in really feel to Boston’s suburbs than to the paper turbines and potato fields up north – is the place Democrats are already sturdy. Collins’ vulnerability lies as an alternative amongst independents in small towns and cities, in deindustrialized and rural counties drifting rightward for 20 years.
The 2020 U.S. Senate race – one that almost each and every analyst, myself incorporated, idea Collins was once doomed to lose to Democrat Sara Gideon – makes that truth transparent.
Collins outperformed Donald Trump in each and every county. She constructed commanding margins in rural Maine, offsetting Democratic positive aspects in Portland and the southern coast. Her actual step forward got here within the forms of small cities the place Trump misplaced and she or he gained or closed the margin: Ellsworth, Brewer, Machias, Gardiner and Winterport.
The ones former mill cities and repair hubs as soon as anchored the Maine Democratic Birthday celebration. They’re house to precisely the forms of electorate who, in idea, would possibly give any individual like Platner a listening to: no longer deeply ideological, modestly skeptical of each events and cautious of nationwide polarization.
However they’re additionally the electorate least represented within the Democratic number one citizens or the donor category fueling Platner’s marketing campaign.
Doing it as a Democrat
In step with the newest Federal Election Fee figures, best about 12% of Platner’s haul has even come from inside of Maine. The nationalization of marketing campaign finance is turning into extra commonplace for U.S. Senate applicants.
However there are two variations value noting.
Platner’s in-state proportion is upper and extra geographically diffuse than Gideon’s 2020 marketing campaign. Then, in what turned into Maine’s most costly Senate race, simply 4% of Gideon’s warfare chest was once homegrown. Maximum of that Maine cash was once closely concentrated in Portland and the southern coastal hall.
Whilst 64% of Gideon’s Maine general fundraising quantity got here from the 3 southernmost counties, 88% of Platner’s present in-state investment is from out of doors the urban-suburban core of southern Maine.
That divergence issues. It means that whilst Platner’s marketing campaign continues to be fueled by means of nationwide cash, its native base – then again small – extends past the standard Portland orbit.
And there’s a explanation why Platner’s message has no longer been useless on arrival.
The industrial populism he’s advancing speaks without delay to the fabric frustrations many rural citizens specific – frustration with company consolidation, emerging prices and the sensation that prosperity by no means reaches their communities.
The 2024 Cooperative Election Find out about displays that rural independents and moderates ceaselessly proportion innovative instincts on exactly those problems: Huge majorities of rural, average/impartial New Englanders enhance upper taxes at the rich and expanded well being protection. Platner is emphasizing the ones problems – company energy, well being prices, infrastructure, wages – the place the city–rural divide is narrowest.
Platner is also remaining that hole. In an October 2025 survey, 58% of most probably Democratic number one electorate named him as their first selection for the 2026 Senate nomination. Whilst that enhance has most probably modified within the aftermath of 2 controversies – his chest tattoo that resembled a Nazi icon and up to date posts on Reddit, together with one during which he says rural other people “actually are” “stupid” and “racist” – that ballot’s maximum notable discovering is the consistency of enhance throughout source of revenue and schooling ranges.
Nonetheless, whilst his message would possibly bridge source of revenue and schooling, the largest impediment going through Platner is the most simple one: He’s looking to do all of this as a Democrat.
Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins speaks on Nov. 4, 2020, in Bangor, Maine, after Democratic challenger Sara Gideon referred to as her to concede.
AP Picture/Robert F. Bukaty
Listening to, no longer talking
Being anchored in metropolitan {and professional} networks a ways got rid of from rural lifestyles shapes no longer best what Democrats stand for however how they talk, that specialize in ethical and cultural commitments that resonate nationally however really feel summary in smaller, in the neighborhood primarily based communities.
That’s why even an economically resonant message struggles as soon as it meets the nationwide logo.
Rural independents and moderates ceaselessly believe Democrats on taxes, well being care and wages. The ones alignments fade when coverage is framed throughout the establishments and ethical language of a birthday party many not see as suitable with rural tactics of residing.
It’s no longer transparent but how Platner will reply on problems that don’t ballot smartly in rural Maine – environmental law, gun keep watch over or immigration – the place loyalty to the nationwide time table has undone many would-be reformers prior to him.
And that schism isn’t as a result of rural electorate misunderstand their “self-interest” or as a result of racial canine whistles have led them off track. It’s hostility towards a birthday party that, with uncommon exception, sees the long run as one thing rural The united states should adapt to, no longer one thing it will have to assist outline.
That’s the risk of treating biography because the option to a decades-long realignment. Platner could be as shut as Democrats have are available in years to a candidate who can communicate credibly to rural electorate about energy, position and coverage. However he nonetheless has to do it whilst sporting the “scarlet D” – the load of a birthday party logo constructed over generations.
Whether or not he wins or loses, his marketing campaign already issues to a deeper query: Can Democrats do greater than hire rural authenticity? Put extra bluntly, the actual check isn’t whether or not Platner can talk to rural Maine, it’s whether or not his birthday party can in the end discover ways to pay attention it.
