Graham Platner

We have a specific law from 1980, which does not extend to the Maine tribes.

the same protections that all other 570 nationally, federally recognized tribes get.

So it means that the main tribes have to spend a bunch of money on lobbyists in Washington, DC, because for legislation to impact them, they need to be named specifically.

So they have to have people in Washington to make sure that Maliseet, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, that that gets added as words into bills.

There have been multiple attempts to fix this, and the governor has opposed all of them, both as attorney general and as governor.

So to me, that is also a pretty fundamental difference around, I don't know, like a foundation of political philosophy.

I do not see expanding tribal sovereignty in Maine as a bad thing at all.

I think it's good, and I also think it's morally the correct thing to do, since we have been not good faith actors in our relationships with the tribes.

And so like there are, and then last but not least, rather big one I think is, I think we have to tax the rich.

And the governor has vetoed multiple bipartisan bills, some written by Republicans that were trying to raise taxes on the wealthy in Maine, creating three new tax brackets was completely reasonable.

And the governor vetoed that.

And again, that just doesn't show a commitment to going after where the money is, which I think as we move into this next phase in American history, I think that that's gonna have to be like a pretty foundational element of our politics going forward.

I mean, I've always been...

politically, I was a big history buff when I was a kid, which in many ways kind of makes you sort of politically aware just because you're, you're doing that.

Um, in high school, I was really, I was introduced to more critical thought like Howard Zinn, uh, and Chomsky.

I, you know, at that point, but I, I remember reading those things and like being like, yeah, some of this makes sense.

But I also still was very much like a bit of a patriotic

young man, and I always wanted to join the military, so I had this kind of weird militaristic bent that I really can't explain, but since I was two, I wanted to be a soldier.

It was really after my military service that I began to think much more deeply about it, primarily because I had four tours in the infantry, and I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And I really came to believe that what we were doing was not what we were claiming to do.