SULLIVAN, Maine — If you want to get a taste of the Democrat who rose from nowhere to become a buzzworthy U.S. Senate contender, walk into The Dunbar Store on Route 1 in his hometown and head left to the sandwich counter.
Listed next to the lobster roll special is “The Graham Platner,” a sandwich with roast beef, pepperjack cheese, extra horseradish mayo, a splash of oil and vegetables. Below the ingredients is a quote attributed to the namesake: “The bread is just a vehicle for condiments.”
The sandwich predates Platner’s campaign. The 41-year-old always orders that combination after initially being “the ham and cheese guy” when he first frequented the store amid his daily work coming to and from the water while running Waukeag Neck Oyster Company, as prep cook Sean Jenkins and Dunbar’s co-owner Josh Winer explained Thursday morning.
It illustrates Platner’s outsized reputation in his hometown, where he once chaired the planning board and gets paid a stipend as harbor master. Those are his only experiences in public office, making Sullivan one of the only canvasses to show what the candidate may do if he takes a massive step up into the U.S. Senate.
That dearth of experience and a recent string of controversies that roiled his campaign are the biggest knocks on Platner. But interviews with people who have known and worked with him at the local level, including those who said they disagree with his progressive views, revealed why he has traction in a primary with Gov. Janet Mills for the right to take on Sen. Susan Collins.
“I trust him, which you don’t say a lot about senators because they only care about themselves,” Jenkins said while working with Winer behind the sandwich counter. “But he cares about everyone.”
President Donald Trump won Sullivan by just 30 votes in the 2024 election. The Hancock County town of nearly 1,300 people will probably not decide the race, but some of its residents got a sneak peek of the campaign early on, including Town Manager Ray Weintraub.
Platner disclosed his Senate plans to Weintraub, who moved to Sullivan and became town manager in 2023 after a lengthy career as a foreman with the Long Island Rail Road in New York, and a few other locals before launching a campaign that got national headlines in August.
Samantha Marshall, a waitress who lives by Platner and his wife and joined the planning board when Platner did around five years ago, also received advance notice. While surprised at first, Marshall said she could also picture Platner in the Senate after seeing him work on the planning board, which he has since stepped away from to campaign.
Platner “took the bull right by the horns” in stepping up to chair a board that had all new members at the time, she said. He researched other towns’ ordinances, listened to varied political viewpoints and organized field trips to sites of potential developments to help the board make decisions.
“Anything he jumps into, it’s a full endeavor,” Weintraub said. “It’s not just, oh, a one-off, or he’s slightly interested. If he’s in, he’s in.”
Some townspeople were restrained in speaking about Platner. A few declined comment, citing disagreements with his political stances and views expressed in old Reddit posts unearthed last month, including those asking why Black people didn’t tip and deriding rural voters. The Marine veteran also had a tattoo of a Nazi symbol that he covered up during a media firestorm.
Platner apologized for the past posts, said they do not reflect the person he is now and vowed to stay in the race. He is drawing large crowds at frequent town hall events despite a series of staff exits. Last week, he hired former Lewiston mayoral candidate Ben Chin away from a longtime job at the progressive Maine People’s Alliance to manage his campaign.
Mills and her allies have questioned Platner’s judgment, argued his resume is too thin and said he would struggle to win less-progressive parts of Maine. Last month, Maine Beer Company cofounder Dan Kleban, who dropped out of the Senate race to endorse Mills, echoed her arguments about electability.
“She’s proven that she can win statewide,” Kleban said alongside Mills at his brewery. “She’s done it not once but twice.”
But Platner’s campaign has not slowed down. His neighbors and friends think he has at least shown himself to be a genuine person willing to serve his community.
Others in Sullivan who are less politically engaged are still learning about him. A young customer leaving Dunbar on Thursday asked a reporter to spell Platner’s name so she could save it in her phone and research him later.
Platner was in Bath on Thursday for another town hall-style rally but spoke with a reporter Friday over Zoom. A politics “that is far more rooted in community” like his in Sullivan is what he thinks is needed.
“We’ve had a politics for too long that is far more based around the title or the role and less about its sort of material impact on communities and on real people,” Platner said.
