Marine origins

Platner is a Marine veteran. He enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after graduating from high school in 2003 and participated in three combat tours in Iraq during his eight years in the military. He served an additional tour in the Army in the Afghanistan War.

“I took my job in the infantry very seriously,” he told podcast hosts Andrew Vontz and Jonathan E. Kaplan this week. 

“Serving in the infantry when you’re deployed is an exhausting experience,” Platner said. “But I always tried to inculcate this mental commitment to just always moving forward. No matter how brutal it’s feeling, no matter how gassed out you are, you always have to push. But it’s important to train yourself, and the people you’re leading, that even when you think you are absolutely done, that you are fully smoked, you can keep going. You have the capacity to keep going. You cannot stop.”

Oyster farmer

After exiting the military, Platner turned to a new venture: oyster farming. He began working on his friend’s oyster farm in 2018. He’s now the owner of Waukeag Neck Oyster Co., which lies in Frenchman Bay. 

“The first time I ate the oysters, I was, like, holy s***,” he told New Yorker last fall. “I’m ready to be an oyster farmer.” 

Platner has said his time working on the water will directly inform how he moves in Congress. 

“There’s a level of cooperation that exists on the sea,” he told Bon Appétit. “Out here on the water, everybody’s got a whole bunch of different political opinions, but if someone’s in trouble, everybody shows up. And that gives me a hell of a lot of hope.”

Populist platform

Platner has built his campaign around a progressive agenda, including backing a 5% to 6% tax on people who make over $1 billion. Universal free healthcare is another policy he wants to see implemented nationwide, pointing to the free care he receives from the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

“That gave me an immense amount of freedom,” Platner said of the VA during a campaign event in Farmington last November. “That gave me an immense amount of material freedom to build a life that I wanted to build.”

Platner’s current anti-war stance was honed by his four deployments, with the Senate candidate saying he became “deeply disillusioned with American foreign policy, with the wars I had taken part in.”

Platner has sought to cultivate a populist image, capitalizing on his blue-collar roots, and arguing that “the enemy is the oligarchy.” He’s touted an endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), known as one of progressives’ top leaders, and employed a top strategist to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was crowned this year as the first socialist to sit in City Hall. Platner backs breaking up monopolies, strengthening unions, and ending “pointless wars” the United States is involved in, including the latest war in Iran. 

The Iran war is “magnificently stupid,” Platner said during an event in York on Friday. “I have been all over the state of Maine over the past month, two months or so. … Nobody thinks this is a good idea.”

Platner detailed several policies he would pursue in an NBC News interview released this week, including removing two conservative Supreme Court justices, possibly expanding the court, and weakening the filibuster, a Senate tool designed to force a spirit of open debate and compromise. 

Platner is anti-Israel, accusing the country of carrying out genocide in Gaza. He leans to the Right on guns, opposing a ban on semi-automatic assault-style weapons. The Senate candidate is also highly critical of President Donald Trump, declaring that he would use subpoena power to investigate the administration if elected in order to “shut the White House down.” 

“Here in Maine, people are angry,” he told the Associated Press last year. “They’re frustrated. They are disillusioned. They see a political apparatus that has not served their interests.”

Controversies

Platner’s campaign was rocked last fall due to years-old, controversial Reddit posts he made that were newly publicized, as well as revelations that he had a tattoo with Nazi connotations. Platner apologized, but suggested the revelations were perpetrated by the Mills campaign and other establishment leaders trying to sabotage his Senate bid through “oppo research.” Platner said when he got a tattoo resembling the Nazi SS skull motif during a drunken night out with his Marine friends nearly two decades ago, he was unfamiliar with its Nazi association, saying they “are popular amongst military units.” 

The Senate candidate has said he was struggling with mental health problems and PTSD when he made Reddit posts describing himself as a communist, making “anti-LGBTQ+ jokes,” and criticizing police and white people.

“I spent years depressed and angry,” Platner said Tuesday. “When I got out [of the military], I lost the sense of purpose. I had planned to be a professional soldier. I thought I was going to do a career in the service. And then suddenly there I am as a 29-, 30-year-old civilian with no preparation mentally for that. While I still had the physical element of well-being, mentally I really began to go off a cliff.

“But going through that and coming out of it through therapy and building community really turned me into a much more open and mentally stronger person. I often see other guys and women who had experiences like mine with that front still up, this kind of tough alpha vibe going on,” he added. “And what I see is somebody who still has the wrong kind of armor on. I almost feel bad because I think, you shouldn’t just get over it a little bit. Just understand that by being vulnerable and opening up to people, you’re going to feel much better about yourself as a person.”

Electoral prospects

Platner is set to hand Mills a handy defeat in the June 9 primary election, according to recent polling, handing him a 35-point lead. 

The outcome of the general election is far less certain. The latest polling from Echelon Insights shows Collins trailing Platner by just 6% ahead of November. 

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As his Republican opponent, Collins holds the powerful trappings of incumbency, while the five-term senator has also maintained a formidable cash advantage over Platner.

And while she’s considered one of the most vulnerable incumbents up for reelection, the centrist senator has historically defied the odds, winning her last campaign with 51% of the vote, the same year Maine backed former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, by 9 points.