Graham Platner

I think it's just a healthy form of it, which is, yeah, look, I mean, I lift weights.

I shoot guns.

My background is obviously in the military.

I work outside.

Most of my hobbies are things that people tend to associate with like manly stuff, I guess.

The exact same time I go to therapy, I have a very open sort of dialogue and emotional relationship with my wife.

I work incredibly hard to put myself in places where I share space with folks who have very different outlooks or backgrounds as me, and then open up to the idea that their lived experience is exactly as valid as mine.

It's very clear that here in the state of Maine, the voters really do understand that I am who I claim to be.

I'm a very real person and warts and all.

Of course.

Thanks for having me.

Yep.

I firmly believe that...

re-empowering organized labor is going to be one of the keys to building the power necessary to really take back our democracy from corporate interests, honestly, from the interest of money, from the interest of billionaires.

Historically, organized labor has always really been the kind of foundation of any kind of real movement politics that is able to advocate for working people.

And so being able to build a close relationship with labor

being able to go be an advocate for labor in the United States Senate.

This is a pretty, I don't know, core part of my politics.

And so the relationships I've been able to build with the unions here in Maine, I mean, it's been an absolute honor.

And it also is, I think, kind of core to the project we're undertaking, which is turning the Democratic Party back into the party of working people.