Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.
FREEPORT, Maine — At a Thursday campaign stop, Gov. Janet Mills said she disagreed with incendiary social media posts from Democratic U.S. Senate primary rival Graham Platner that CNN unearthed earlier in the day.
Platner, an oyster farmer from Sullivan who gained a large grassroots following after his August campaign launch, disavowed Reddit posts from a few years ago in which he described himself as a communist, called rural and white Americans racists, and said all police are “bastards.”
The Democratic governor, who entered the primary race for the right to take on Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins on Tuesday, told reporters at Maine Beer Co. that she had not seen articles about the posts and had to have a reporter read examples of them aloud.
“Obviously, I would strongly disagree with those comments,” Mills said.
The posts reported by CNN date back to 2020 on left-wing Reddit pages. Platner told the news outlet that many of them came during heated online arguments and during a dark time in his life after returning home from his service in the military and afterward as a military contractor.
“I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I own a small business. I’m a Marine Corps veteran,” he told CNN.
Maine Beer Co. co-founder Dan Kleban joined Mills at his brewery Thursday to reiterate how he is endorsing her after suspending Tuesday his Senate campaign that only began last month. Another Democrat in the race, Jordan Wood of Bristol, had no comment on Platner’s past posts, a campaign spokesperson said.
