Graham Cunningham Platner (born September 1, 1984) is an American oyster farmer, Marine Corps veteran, and politician. Platner was the Democratic nominee in the 2026 US Senate election in Maine until he ended his campaign in July.
Born and raised in coastal Maine, Platner enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating from high school. He served eight years, including three combat tours in Iraq as a Marine and one in Afghanistan with the Maryland Army National Guard. After his military service, he worked as a security contractor in Afghanistan before returning to Maine and entering the oyster farming business. From there, he took over an operation in 2020 and became active in local government before announcing his candidacy for the US Senate in August 2025.
Platner has been described as a populist and a progressive who is critical of the Democratic Party establishment. His platform focuses on issues such as housing affordability, universal health care, strengthening labor unions, reducing the political power of billionaires, and ending US involvement in what he calls "pointless" wars.
Platner's candidacy was marked by several controversies, including past statements on Reddit, a Nazi-era Totenkopf tattoo on his chest, and alleged misconduct in romantic relationships, including a history of sexting several women during his marriage and physically threatening and disturbing behavior toward past romantic partners. In July 2026, a former girlfriend accused Platner of raping her, after which several elected Democrats and the Maine Democratic Party rescinded their endorsements and called for him to end his campaign. He suspended his campaign days later while denying all allegations of rape and abuse. Platner withdrew from the race on July 10.
Early life Graham Platner was born on September 1, 1984, in Blue Hill, Maine. He was raised in Sullivan, a coastal town near Acadia National Park, and in Ellsworth. He is the elder of two sons born to upscale restaurant owner Leslie Harlow and lawyer Bronson Platner. Platner's parents separated when he was six. His grandfather, Warren Platner, was a modernist architect who designed interiors for the Ford Foundation and Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the old World Trade Center.
In 1999, Platner spent a semester at the Hotchkiss School, a boarding school in Lakeville, Connecticut, until he was expelled. He resumed his education as a day student at John Bapst Memorial High School, a college-preparatory school in Bangor, Maine. After graduating from high school, Platner took a gap year in 2003 to backpack through Europe and Africa and work on the Appalachian Trail.
Career Military Platner enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating from high school in 2003. He attended the Marine Corps School of Infantry, then deployed to Iraq in 2005. He served a total of eight years in the military, including three combat tours in Iraq, in areas including Ramadi and Fallujah. In 2025, when asked why he served in the Iraq War after protesting it, Platner said, "I thought I could do some good. And I wanted to play soldier. I might have read too much Hemingway."
After four years in the military, Platner enrolled at George Washington University (GWU), funded by the G.I. Bill. Shortly after starting school, he enlisted in the National Guard and served an additional tour of duty in the war in Afghanistan. He returned to Washington in 2011, resuming classes at GWU and working as a bartender at the Tune Inn on Capitol Hill. From 2011 to 2016 he alternated between living in DC and military deployments, before withdrawing from GWU and returning to Maine in 2016 for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and other military-related injuries.
In 2018, Platner returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, for about six months as a State Department security contractor with Constellis, where he provided diplomatic security to the US Ambassador to Afghanistan. He returned to Maine the same year, saying he had quickly grown more disillusioned with the military and what he called fraudulent funneling of taxpayer money to private defense companies.
Oyster farming While on leave from Afghanistan in 2018, Platner spent two weeks farming oysters with Jock Crothers, founder of Waukeag Neck Oyster Co., a small Frenchman Bay operation established in 2010 that supplies restaurants in Downeast Maine. Platner has said he was "miserable" working as a security contractor, and his mother devised a plan to bring him back to Maine with the help of a family friend who owned the farm; Platner has said the business "fell into my lap". After resigning as a security contractor and returning to Maine later that year, he began working at the farm full-time. He took over the company in 2020, and owns and operates it with his wife, Amy, and another business partner. He says the business does not make much money, and his mother's restaurant is his biggest customer. He supplements his income with benefits he earns as a 100% disabled veteran. Platner also runs a mooring and dive service.
Local government and community involvement Platner was Sullivan's harbormaster and the chair of Sullivan's planning board. He has also been involved in grassroots organizing, leading political efforts with the Acadia Action activist group. In 2022, he publicly opposed a proposition that would have imposed a moratorium on aquaculture, asserting at the town meeting where the vote was held that despite being aimed at "industrial scale" operations, the wording of the moratorium would have swept up many smaller businesses, including his own; the proposition failed in that meeting.
U.S. Senate campaign
In July 2025, a coalition of labor and community groups approached Platner to suggest he consider running for Senate. He has said his first reaction was to reject the idea, but that he reconsidered it with his wife when the group returned with a detailed plan.
Candidate vetting, standard practice in many US elections, often takes weeks and tens of thousands of dollars to complete. Democratic strategist and Platner staffer Daniel Moraff paid $6,250 for a background check on Platner, which took three days.
Platner launched his Senate campaign on August 19, 2025, with a video produced by Morris Katz, a senior adviser and admaker for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. In the video, Platner highlighted his military and working-class credentials and criticized Collins in harsh terms: This video received 2.5 million views in its first 24 hours, sparking national media attention. The campaign raised $1 million in its first nine days, and reported amassing over 2,700 volunteers.
Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Platner on August 30, ahead of a Fighting Oligarchy tour appearance in Portland with Platner and Maine gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson. The event was originally scheduled to be held in an auditorium but had to be moved to a much larger arena due to high public interest. Platner was also endorsed by Senators Ruben Gallego, Martin Heinrich, and Elizabeth Warren; and Representative Ro Khanna. He was also endorsed by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Maine State Nurses Association, and United Auto Workers.
Platner's campaign reported that more than 800 people attended his first town hall meeting in Ellsworth, and that over 6,000 volunteers had joined since his August candidacy announcement. Platner's volunteer network canvassed against Maine's Question 1, a 2025 ballot measure to restrict absentee voting and require photo identification that was defeated.
In late October and early November 2025, several high-level staffers left Platner's campaign during a period that coincided with media reporting on his past controversial Reddit posts. On October 17, Platner's political director, Genevieve McDonald, resigned. Platner offered her $15,000 in severance pay if she signed an NDA, but she refused the offer. On October 27, Platner's campaign manager, Kevin Brown, resigned, citing family reasons. On October 31, Platner's campaign finance director, Ronald Holmes, resigned. Also on October 31, Platner filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission indicating that Victoria Perrone was no longer his treasurer and Ben Martelo would take her place. On November 7, Platner hired Ben Chin as his new campaign manager. Chin is the deputy director of the Maine People's Alliance, a progressive advocacy organization.
Politico wrote that Platner "embodies a quarter-century of raw American frustration", and The Washington Post described his candidacy as one of several "rugged guy" campaigns in 2026, along with Dan Osborn's Senate campaign in Nebraska and Nathan Sage's in Iowa. By March 2026, Platner had a significant polling lead and fundraising advantage over his primary opponent, Maine governor Janet Mills. Mills suspended her campaign on April 30. With Mills having suspended her campaign and no major opposition remaining, Platner won the June Democratic primary with 72% of the vote. His vote count set a record for a Maine Democratic primary for US Senate, exceeding Sara Gideon's in 2020 by over 40,000 votes.
Campaign controversies In October 2025, various news outlets reported on Reddit posts Platner made between 2013 and 2021 in which he called himself a "communist", wrote that "all cops are bastards", agreed with a post calling rural white Americans "racist and stupid", and advocated political violence and armed resistance. In a 2013 Reddit discussion about a video promoting anti-rape underwear, Platner wrote: "Rape is a real thing. If you're so worried about it to buy Kevlar underwear you'd think you might not get blacked out f----d up around people you aren't comfortable with." He apologized for the posts in an interview with CNN, attributing them to his struggles with PTSD.
More controversy arose over a January 2020 Reddit post in which Platner responded to a question asking why he had joined the Marines by writing: "I wanted to have an adventure and kill some people." Platner denounced his past actions and the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in an April 2026 interview, saying that he had "come to grips with the fact that the violence I took part in effectively had no purpose, or it had no benefit for the United States. I don't think that the war in Iraq did anything good for the American people". He said he was disgusted by "a political system which, in many ways, does not care about the human cost of war, whether on our side or the violence that we dole out to civilian populations and the countries we go fight these wars in."
During his 2026 Senate campaign, Platner faced scrutiny over a tattoo on his chest of the Totenkopf symbol used by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) and SS-Totenkopfverbände. In an interview on Pod Save America, Platner said he and other Marines received the tattoo while on leave in Croatia in 2007 and that he was unaware of its historical association at the time. He later covered the tattoo. CNN and Jewish Insider reported a former acquaintance's allegation that Platner had previously called the tattoo "my Totenkopf", which Platner denied. A former girlfriend and conservative activist interviewed by The New York Times in June 2026 also said he had called the tattoo "my Totenkopf" years before launching his campaign. A Marine who got a tattoo matching Platner's told Zeteo in June 2026 that he and Platner did not deliberately choose Nazi symbols, saying, "We just got matching skull-and-crossbone tattoos that we thought looked cool."