Graham Platner

And we figured we just have to build the room.

And once you build the room, people come into it and they start talking to each other and they start building relationships.

And I mean, the way we did it was pretty non-hierarchical.

So essentially like folks would get together and be like, this is the thing I care about.

She was like, I care about that too.

And we're like, go forth and make that a campaign.

And it worked.

Like we actually wound up like winning the next school board race.

And we're still like kind of, now we're trying to get candidates to run for county commissioner, stuff like that.

Yeah.

So there is a, to me, that was a direct, it was a moment where I realized, oh man, this kind of power building is very real.

It just requires people to really get out of their comfort zone and start building relationships again.

And for me, it was the foundation of when the campaign started.

one of the reasons i agreed to do this was purely to use it as a statewide organizing like vehicle with the visibility and the resources that we're going to get we can take that kind of strategy those kind of tactics that kind of

on the ground trust building that we do, and we can supercharge it, and we can get the labor unions involved, and we can get all the other community organizations around the state involved.

And then we can bring in all these people who engage with politics via electoral campaigns, and we can train them how to be organizers and activists in their community.

And I think that's how you build the apparatus to knock on enough doors, talk to enough people, and build enough trust.

I'm convinced we're not just going to beat Susan Collins in November.

I think we're going to trounce Susan Collins.

And if the worst thing happens and we have an election that is contested or called into question, well, we still have an apparatus to turn people out.