What Other Skeletons Are Lurking in Graham Platner’s Closet?

What have we learned at this point about Graham Platner, presumptive Democratic candidate for Senate in the high-stakes race against Susan Collins in Maine? Mainers — and the national media — were certainly sold one story about Platner: that of an antiwar Marine during the Iraq War, a hardscrabble oysterman, and a working-class straight talker.

And then, one by one, we discovered that each of these biographical points were, when not outright false, distorted beyond all recognition. It turns out that Platner, who frequently accuses Senator Collins of “voting to send him to Iraq,” actively volunteered two years after the United States declared war because — in his own words, later hastily erased from Reddit — “I wanted to have an adventure and kill some people.” (He hated the job so much he later signed up with Blackwater as a mercenary to go to Afghanistan.) It turns out that his vaunted oyster farm’s biggest customer is his mother, who buys his tiny haul for her restaurant.

JB

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.

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What have we learned at this point about Graham Platner, presumptive Democratic candidate for Senate in the high-stakes race against Susan Collins in Maine? Mainers — and the national media — were certainly sold one story about Platner: that of an antiwar Marine during the Iraq War, a hardscrabble oysterman, and a working-class straight talker.

And then, one by one, we discovered that each of these biographical points were, when not outright false, distorted beyond all recognition. It turns out that Platner, who frequently accuses Senator Collins of “voting to send him to Iraq,” actively volunteered two years after the United States declared war because — in his own words, later hastily erased from Reddit — “I wanted to have an adventure and kill some people.” (He hated the job so much he later signed up with Blackwater as a mercenary to go to Afghanistan.) It turns out that his vaunted oyster farm’s biggest customer is his mother, who buys his tiny haul for her restaurant.

JB

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.