Platner and Jackson are standing up for Maine workers

This opinion piece is part of an ongoing debate in Maine DSA about candidates in 2026. Pine and Roses welcomes contributions.

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A funny thing happened on the way to Graham Platner’s political funeral. Platner took responsibility for his past views, issued a heartfelt apology for harm done, and explained that he had changed his mind. As he put it to a crowd of 500 in Ogunquit, “I am not proud of what I said, but I am proud of what I am today.” Maine AFL-CIO communications director Andy O’Brien read all 750 pages of Platner’s old threads and concluded, “I won’t give up Graham. I believe in him, the policies he is championing and his values. There is no one else in the race who comes close.” As for the tattoogate, Platner plausibly explained that he didn’t know the skull was linked to the SS when he got it and had it inked over, taking his shirt off on local TV to prove it. He made the same points to 1200 people on a campaign conference call on Sunday.

I spoke to Platner for fifteen minutes over the weekend in a small huddle of union folks, so I don’t have any special insight into his soul. However, I think Occum’s Razor applies here. That is, what’s the most obvious way to explain the skeletons in Platner’s closet?

Platner was a soldier. He participated in brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reveled in it for a time, got a macho tattoo, and joined Reddit. War brutalized his mind and body. He developed PTSD and a profound sense of alienation from the system he was fighting for. As he says, treatment at the VA “saved my life.” He reconsidered his views and came to resent the “stupid wars” he fought in. He looked around and saw how the billionaires are laughing all the way to the bank. He listened to Bernie. He changed. He decided to do something about it.

From what I’ve seen, the vast majority of his supporters appear willing to accept this simple explanation and are ready to move on. Why? First, many of us are sick and tired of social media outrage and political mudslinging. Second, even as Susan Collins has enabled the Trump administration’s attacks, Gov. Mills—despite the credit she earned for standing up to Trump—has burned bridges with large numbers of working-class and progressive voters over her two terms. Third, Platner’s political platform is meeting the moment. In a nutshell, Platner argues that the billionaires have screwed the working class and that both corporate Democrats and Republicans have aided and abetted them. Now that fascism is at the gates, playing centrist DNC games is not only insufficient to turn the tide, it is downright dangerous. Instead, we need to put workers living standards first, fight for Medicare for All and union power, and defend our LGTBQ siblings and immigrant brothers and sisters. As Platner would put it, the time for bullshit is over.

Platner may or may not be the perfect messenger, but the message is getting through.

Which brings me to Troy Jackson, Democratic candidate for governor. Like Platner, Jackson has changed his tune over the years. Born into a hardscrabble logging family from northern Maine, he began his political career as a Republican before registering as an independent and then a Democrat. He served as a state legislator, eventually rising to be president of the Maine Senate. Along the way, he became a champion of unions, walking more picket lines and protests than any politician you could name and sticking his neck out for Bernie to boot. It’s hard to overstate Troy’s support among the union movement in Maine. He is not only for the labor movement, he is family. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t leave town until workers arrested for picketing are released from jail. He gets choked up in sorrow and anger when recounting fellow workers lost along the way. Eugene V. Debs’ words fit Jackson, “When I rise it will be with the ranks, not from the ranks.”

There is an eight-month-long road to travel for either of them to win the primary in June and they both face formidable opponents. If you’re looking for a place in the country where there will be a fair fight between competent and accomplished liberal politicians on the one hand and left-wing, working-class populists on the other, Maine is the place to be. Neither Platner nor Jackson’s primary opponents are creatures of Wall Street. In many ways, they are the best the mainstream Democratic Party has to offer. They are scandal free and are, by all accounts, intelligent and honorable people. So what we are going to see—inevitable dirty tricks and tens of millions in campaign ads aside—is a real contest of ideas. And for Platner and Jackson’s ideas to win, they are going to need to turn their campaigns into movements. That is what is at stake in Maine in 2026.

For many, that is enough and they are ready to fight.

There are objections to this line of thinking. Of course, from the center, Chuck Schumer and his ilk raise the electability flag. For a number of reasons, that won’t fly so high this time.

But there are also a surprising number of objections from those standing to Platner and Jackson’s left. These arguments may not hold sway with large numbers of people, but they are important to address for two reasons. First, speaking only for myself as a member of Maine Democratic Socialists of America, we are a very small organization, but we have proven that we can lend a hand. And both these campaigns will need all the help they can get. Second, the best political alliances are mutually beneficial. And if we want socialist ideas to become more influential, then we must learn to work beside people who are animated by solidarity and the desire to fight the bosses and billionaires. And a very large portion of those people will be volunteering for Platner and Jackson between now and June.

So what are the objections on the left?

1. We should focus on patient, local organizing. Maine DSA has accomplished a lot for a relatively new organization. We’ve raised the minimum wage and won protection for renters in Portland. We’ve spoken out alongside allies to defeat anti-trans bills in the legislature, protested against genocide in Gaza, and helped organized the biggest May Day march in memory. Much of this work has taken root in local contexts. On the other hand, the biggest statewide campaign we helped lead—Pine Tree Power—went down to defeat despite our best efforts. Naturally, this contrast has raised questions. These are worth thinking through carefully. But the dynamic is different here, rather than being relatively isolated and exhausted as we were during Pine Tree Power, we will be embraced and lifted up by the Platner and Jackson campaigns. We must analyze each new situation based on our own experience, a knowledge of history, and the best guess we can muster. That is the art of politics.

2. Support, but don’t endorse. This argument stems from two sources. First, there are people who believe that Platner and Jackson will be damaged by any association with Maine DSA. I doubt that very much, but even if it were true (or some staffers believe it), Platner and Jackson spoke to 7000 people in the Cross Insurance Arena last month alongside the world’s best-known democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders. If the centrists and rightwing are going to attack either of them for this association, then they already have all the ammunition they need. Second, some say that the complexity of federal election law is simply too burdensome when it comes to an endorsement to make it worth our while. The law really is absurd—billionaires can buy and sell candidates legally, while we are highly regulated—but with good legal advice and some significant effort, we can both obey the law and do the right thing politically. There is an associated view that Maine DSA members should simply volunteer for the campaign as individuals but not take a stand as an organization. I find this misguided. If Maine DSA is to become a significant force in politics, it won’t be because of what we do on our own, it will be what we do together.

3. Platner and Jackson are not radical enough. I am sympathetic to this point of view. Genocide in Gaza, climate catastrophe, all out assaults on abortion and trans rights, ICE rampaging through our streets. All these point to the need for a revolutionary change right now. There are many thousands of people in Maine who are, rightfully, in no mood to compromise. This is a sign that a real political movement is being born. But it also means that this new movement must learn strategy and tactics. It is not enough to be convinced ourselves, we must convince others. And most people are not convinced by reading, for instance, an article like this. They are convinced by joining a struggle.

This is one of the mistakes that Bluebird makes in an article in Pine and Roses titled, “Support, but don’t endorse Platner.” Since, Bluebird argues, Graham has not adopted a socialist program, we would damage the socialist cause by endorsing him. Without getting into the weeds here, while some socialists have held this view, it has come under fire from most of the movement’s big guns over the years. As a wise man once said, “ Propaganda and agitation alone are not enough for an entire class, the broad masses of the working people, those oppressed by capital, to take up such a stand. For that, the masses must have their own political experience.”

Bluebird’s second mistake is to radically overestimate our own forces, writing that Maine DSA is the “vanguard of the working class struggle.” If wishes were horses… The reality is that Maine DSA is “very, very weak” compared to what we’re up against—as our wise man said of an early generation of small socialist organizations. That problem has never been solved by holding the “correct” [Bluebird’s emphasis] position in order to “advance a socialist agenda.” Rather, it has been by putting the fight for workers’ power at the center of everything we do while finding creative ways to forge united fronts through compromise and dialogue with other political forces who want to fight back against oppression and exploitation.

Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to reach such an agreement. Today it is. The question is, will Maine DSA—in addition to all the other important work it does on a daily basis—join the campaigns that will define Maine politics for the coming eight months and more.

To paraphrase an old song: which side are we on?