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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittroff. This is The Daily. On Tuesday, Mainers will vote in a primary for a high-stakes Senate seat that Democrats think they can win back from Republicans for the first time in decades. They're pinning their hopes on progressive Democrat Graham Plattner, a charismatic oyster farmer and a combat veteran with a populist message.
But Plattner's faced a string of accusations surrounding his personal behavior, including new reporting in The Times that broke last week. Today, my colleagues Lisa Lair and Katie Glick explain what this race means for Maine and for the prospects of the Democratic Party. It's Tuesday, June 9th. Hi, Lisa. Hi. Hi, Katie. Hi.
So, we have you here because you two broke this story late last week, and I think it's fair to say that it generated a huge reaction. I think that's fair to say. It's been quite the wild couple of days. I think the story has really divided voters and strategists and the chattering political class, not only in Maine, but just all over the country. Just to lay it out.
This was a story about the experiences of past girlfriends of Graham Plattner, allegations of heavy drinking, physical intimidation. These were not allegations of anything criminal, no allegations of domestic abuse, but some pretty rough stuff. And we're going to get deeper into that reporting.
But before we do that, just explain for me the stakes of what we're talking about here, the stakes of this race. I think that in part it reflects just how critical this race is. Maine is all but essential to the Democrats' path to retaking the Senate. But even before there was any serious talk of who the Democratic nominee could or should be,
Maine loomed so large in the minds of Democrats because they thought last time that Susan Collins was on the ballot that she was finally going to lose. Instead, she wins. And so going in to 2026, people were extremely motivated to finally mount a campaign that could actually defeat Senator Collins.
You know, and I also think this race, it's a place where they have really tested this thesis, which many Democrats believe that the party needs new energy, new leadership, more authentic messengers. And they are testing that through this candidate, Graham Plattner, who is likely to be their Democratic nominee in this race.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the Maine Senate primary race?
She had the political staff. She was just a well-known Democratic leader in this state. And then over last summer, some progressive operatives and activists decided that they were really unhappy with Mills as the pick. And so they went up to Maine and started looking for someone else who could challenge Mills. Janet Mills in the Democratic primary.
And they found Graham Plattner, who at the time was running a small oyster farm in coastal Maine. He had moved back up in 2016 after spending some time in Washington serving in the military. He had never run for any elected office, but they decided that this was the guy who could challenge Janet Mills. And should he win the nomination? Eventually, Susan Collins. And why pick him?
I get that he reads as homegrown. You know, he's a little rough around the edges in a kind of everyman way. But what about him specifically felt like the right choice for these progressives? How did they actually land on this guy? They had seen a video that he had done as part of like an aquaculture association, sort of related to the oysters. An aquaculture association.
Yes, that's what the oyster... Maine. Yes, Maine. Got it. And, you know, he had been involved with some very local political fights over aquaculture in the Bay where he has his oyster farm.
Chapter 3: Who is Graham Platner and what scandals has he faced?
And they saw that he could sort of speak compellingly. And what he had to say was essentially an economic populist message talking about taking on corruption, taking on billionaires. And that sort of caught their attention. And there was also this idea of from the progressive Democratic side of making this a test case for the party establishment.
This was a place where they thought that they could sort of send a message about the kind of leaders they thought the party should have. Okay, so these progressives find Plattner. They choose him. They see him as the foil for Janet Mills. And what happens? How does it go? In Maine, there is a new Democrat trying to harvest a political career, so to speak. He starts taking off.
Let's talk about Plattner, who's completely unknown and untested. But he has just kind of exploded on the scene. He has a lot of natural political talent.
My name is Graham Plattner, and I am running for United States Senate.
He's sitting for every interview. My guest today is a veteran oyster farmer and Maine Senate candidate, Graham Plattner.
Graham, great to see you. Thank you. Our guest this Sunday is Graham Plattner, who's running for Senate in Maine.
Let's talk to Graham Plattner. Hours and hours and hours of podcasting, of interviews. Relatable. Relatable, right. He's doing these town halls.
Until the Democratic Party at the federal level. is no longer beholden to the same corporate interests that the Republican Party is, we're gonna find ourselves back in this position over and over and over again.
And he begins to sort of build a following.
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Chapter 4: What are the stakes for the Democratic Party in this election?
But, you know, it doesn't really matter if Democrats in Washington and Mills strategies see this as a liability. What matters, of course, is what Maine voters think. Right. So we went up to Maine to hear about that. And there were really a range of reactions. Some people are really worried about his comments about women and the tattoo.
And they're worried that something else could maybe come out about him that could be damaging. I think perhaps one of the most striking moments we observed was a woman who stood up at a town hall and asked point blank, what else do voters need to know about you?
I hear your heart saying you've changed. You're a different person now. But they're going to try to find whatever they can.
And specifically, is there an account of a woman who's going to come out and say you mistreated her?
Is there anything from your past that they can dig up on a woman that maybe no didn't mean no at the time?
No.
His response was equally striking.
I've never had some kind of like weird relationships with people. I have a lot of ex-girlfriends. They're all still my friends.
He promised the audience there was nothing else that would come out. But it was also really clear that his message was hitting something really deep that these Democratic primary voters wanted.
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Chapter 5: How did Graham Platner emerge as a candidate against Janet Mills?
So we looked at texts over the years between Ms. Fifield and Mr. Plattner. We looked at... Gchat conversations and Facebook messages between Lindsay and a number of her friends, both during and after the relationship. We saw some of her diary entries after the relationship had ended. And we talked to two of her friends who told us that indeed the pair had had an emotionally volatile relationship.
At the same time, and we're clear about this in the story, those friends could not offer corroboration from the time regarding the physical altercations, the most controversial comments that Lindsay described.
And she told us that she didn't expect them to be able to offer that real-time corroboration from that time because she said she didn't tell anyone at the time, saying that she was embarrassed. But to be clear, we spoke with three women who dated Plattner on and off over a period of years as recently as 2021.
They said spending time with him could be exhilarating, but they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking, of womanizing. One of the women, for instance, told us about an incident in 2021 in which Plattner was very drunk. She told him not to come over. He did anyway. And she describes his behavior that night as reckless and unsettling and says she goes on to cut off contact with him.
So the other element that we had to contend with in this story is that Lindsay Fifield is a conservative and she is someone who has a long history of working in Republican politics. She worked for the Heritage Foundation, which is, of course, a conservative think tank. She worked for Independent Women, which is a conservative women's organization.
And she worked briefly on Nikki Haley's primary campaign. These were not things that she hid from us. She was very open about her political views and her political background and said that they had no influence on the allegations that she was making against Plattner.
But, you know, as part of our corroboration process and certainly on behalf of Times readers, we had to look into those claims and really investigate whether she did have any ties to the Collins campaign. And in the end, we could not find any evidence that she did. And since the story ran, Susan Collins herself came out and said she had never met Lindsay Fifield or even heard her name.
But, of course, just because she doesn't have a connection to Susan Collins' campaign doesn't mean that she doesn't have an agenda, right? How did you think about that? Well, I think that was an important question in the reporting. And so we dealt with it in a number of ways.
We asked her directly about it, and she said very clearly that she would have brought the allegations even against a Republican. And the other thing we did is we felt it was really, really important to be transparent with Times readers about what we knew and what we did not know about her political background. And how did the Plattner campaign react when you brought them this reporting?
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