Graham Platner, Senate Challenger

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour. And we are back on the Zero Hour. I, as always in your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Joining me now is a candidate for the United States Senate from the great state of Maine. He is, he could be described as an insurgent candidate from the left. He was endorsed pretty early on. in the race by my former former boss, who is often but not always right, like everybody in the world. Bernie Sanders gave him a boost, had a couple bumps along the way, but he keeps going. And doing really well in the polls right now. He's running in a primary against, I guess you could say, an establishment Democrat. And he joins us now. He is a lobster fisherman among, or is it oyster? Oysters. I'm an oyster farmer. As soon as I said lobster, I knew it was oysters. This, but, you know, from this, again, from the state of Maine, fishing state. And he joins us now, Graham Platner. Welcome to the Zero Hour. Thank you very much, Richard. It's a pleasure to be here. And it's a pleasure to have you. So let's get this out of the way first. As I mentioned before we went to air, most of my audience will know you, will know about you. Some of them will only know a story or two they've heard here or there. and others will be meeting you for the first time. So you're an oyster farmer, your ex-military, ex-military contractor, and you've done some work in your township. I understand electoral work there. So first question is, why you for Senate, right? What about your background? Makes you a good choice for Senate? The I think the number one thing is that I I live in the town I was born and raised in and I have I moved back to Maine after my time overseas and I am very much I would say of the working world in Maine I make my living on the sea as an oyster farmer and a diver I've been very engaged with my like community governance. I was the chair of the planning board. I was the harbor master. Sadly, I've had to leave both of those for this campaign. But I have spent much of my, much of my life, kind of personally interacting with the

How do I put this? The negatives that our system brings into people's lives. So I joined the Marine Corps out of high school. And I served as a machine gunner in the Marine Corps. I fought in Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq. And then after that, I wound up re-enlisting into the United States Army. And I served in Afghanistan as a rifle squad leader. And I. I kind of saw up close and personal the, or not kind of, I did see up close and personal, the horrific outcomes of, frankly, in a foreign policy based around neo-imperialism and neol colonialism. And I watched this mass expense of blood and treasure on our side and the mass suffering that we inflicted upon all these people in the countries we invaded. And I saw all of it happen while. completely not understanding how any of this was making the lives of people in my hometown any better. And that really began to set me down a path of deeper critique, first of American foreign policy, but eventually I think it became much more systemic. And I began to believe that the system that we live in... is built specifically around enriching and consolidating power for those who are already wealthy and already have an immense amount of power. And that manifests itself in pretty much every possible negative manner throughout our system. That working people are always working harder than they ever have and getting less. People are losing access to health care, losing access to housing, losing access to free time, for God's sake. And all of it is occurring. as we witness the ultra-rich accrue more and more wealth, and we watch corporate power consolidate in ways that are even new in like American history, despite the gilded age. The robber barons of the 1890s would have really, I think, given, they would look with awe at what the tech billionaires today have managed to pull off. And Ovia, you might say. Oh, well, absolutely. And so it like for me, that is I've been I've been sort of very much getting an upfront seat for all of this. And I spent many years working really hard locally. I got very cynical. Frankly, I kind of gave up on the larger political system. And I thought that focusing locally was probably the only way to bring about good material change for people. And. The problem is when you're working within a larger system, there's only just so much you can do. And then this opportunity to run for Senate kind of arose. I think we're in a unique moment here in Maine with this race where someone with my politics and my background actually has a very clear opening. And there's a lot of angst, anti-establishment sort of feeling that we need to speak to. And it's across parties. It's everyone. And It seems that because of my background and because of kind of just the way my life has gone, that I'm a bit, I think, more accessible to a lot of people in Maine than Canada, this just come from kind of the more establishment political world of both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Yeah, I hear you. And that all makes sense. And I would say that for me and a lot of my audience, you know, your platform on your website,

looks great uh you know it says you're not just running against Susan Collins you're running against billionaire class you you know support medicare for all you we have too many billionaires you want to get them out of elections i mean we could go through the whole thing and and uh you know we'll get as much as we can but um I guess I would start with this, just to put your race in context. Correct me if I'm wrong about my impression of what happened with your race. But I think that people in the Democratic Party establishment assumed that Susan Collins was a lock. and didn't really take interest in the Democratic primary, but they saw you gaining momentum and Bernie's endorsement and so on. And then they encourage Janet Mills to run against you. Is that a former governor? Is that pretty accurate timeline? She's the current governor. She's the current governor. Okay. So is that an accurate timeline? Not quite. there had for all through the summer there had been this they're like rumors and ideas that the governor Janet Mills would be the would be the choice of the party. And that, you know, that Chuck Schumer and Washington had essentially chosen her. They have whatever, whatever it is their algorithm is, which I think is irreparably broken, but they've got their thing that chooses candidates. And they thought that she was the best one. And the government, I will just say, I think. disagree fundamentally on a number of policy positions. And I see her very much as more of the kind of, how do I, the more staid establishment kind of thinking where we shouldn't take big risks. We should always just kind of play around in the margins. It's all about finding compromise with, with Republicans and doing this kind of, it's like corporate Democrat stuff. Right. We never really go after the systemic problems. We never really dig into those at fault and go after those who have essentially destroyed our economy, at least the economy for working people. And then there was also this added element where I think Susan Collins is uniquely weak in this election. I, she. she, the story she gives, her charade of being like, I'm a moderate, but she votes with the Trump administration like 95% of the time. She always, in the words of Harry Reid, Susan Collins is always there when you don't need her. She always finds a way to vote against things, to vote against things, but only when it's clear that the Republican Party's going to get it anyways. And she's been there for 30 years.

And I think right now people are sick and tired of a politics that has in many ways emiserated their communities and themselves. And they see it as a politics that's representative of all the people that have been there. And I happen to agree with that critique. I also think that running. a candidate that's chosen by Washington, D.C., that is not interested in talking about any kind of systemic change, that is not interested in talking about developing a much more significant theory of power against the rise of fascism in this country, that is exactly the wrong candidate to run against Susan Collins. Right. And so I got in this race specifically because I did think the governor was going to be the candidate. We got in, but they didn't know we were coming. So I think they were just biding their time. They assume that it's the sitting governor, like, how could this go wrong? And then we announced in August and then they essentially panicked. And frankly, from the looks of it, they're still panicking because we're. significantly up in the polls. Our fundraising numbers blow hers out of the water. And we, and we're building a movement on the ground, which is really kind of, I want to talk about that because that really is the goal of this campaign. And we'll get, we'll get to that for sure. But let's, first of all, let's get this out of the way. And I do not want to spend too much time on it because you put a mileage on it. But, you know, there was this controversy. People wrote you off. last year. You were done as far as the media was concerned because of this controversy. You had this tattoo that was skull and crossbones that turned out to be a Nazi symbol. It's a skull and crossbones that is that was similar to one that some that some neo-Nazis and some German army units used. Although to be fair, it's also a skull and crossbones that non units also use. I've seen it all over. I've done a lot of deployments. I saw it all over the world on all kinds of different outfits, but, but it's, or at least very, I mean, it's a skull and crossbones. They have a pretty significant similarity. There are only so many variations. Yeah, no, and I actually looked at it. It does have a similarity, but I would also say that I'm half Jewish. I've lived a long time. I, uh, I had a bar mitzvah, as a matter of fact, so I got like the ticket punched. And, and, uh, I didn't know it was a Nazi skull and crossbones when I first saw it. So I don't know why people are thinking you should know, but, you know, I wanted to bring that up. And I wanted to bring that up for another reason, too, because I think it's... I think one of the lessons of whether it's the Zohran Mamdani race, whether it's Bernie's race 10 years ago, and then in 2020, multiple races, the near win in Nebraska of an independent candidate, that the sort of what people assume in the media and the political consultant circles are fatal errors, are turning out not to be.

and are turning out in some cases, you know, I'll get yelled at because it is a Nazi civil, but you know, some cases effing up in one way or another or not abiding by the rules. Because you didn't spend your whole life thinking you were going to go into politics. Right. And make you more relatable. And it certainly doesn't seem to have hurt you. You are doing really well against Janet Mills and most beating her in most polls. Not all the last I look, but most, right? So. Pretty much the only ones where we aren't, frankly, they're not really well done polls. They all get ripped apart by actual pollsters. But in the comprehensive polls that are. whether we do them or whether it's i mean there are a number of independent ones that we have nothing to do with uh we're usually either up 15 to 30 points depending in the primary and yet uh when is the primary so folks know june 9th june 9th so there's some time there and uh this would not be a time to get overconfident i was using former campaign vet and uh Also, you know, the big money may step in big time for Janet Mills because I've seen that pattern time and again. Yes, we expect that fully. So I would think so. But I guess, you know, my read was that, you know, they said, Zohran Mamdani, Muslim, you know, adamant on Gaza, you know, impossible to win in New York City. One. uh, Bernie, you know, kind of gruff and, you know, didn't present himself like, you know, he won a lot of races. Um, still the most popular politician in America, according to the polls. So he's doing okay. Um, so it seems as if there's an opening there, and I think that's great. But let me ask you, if I may, uh, A tough question, tough in this sense of tough to answer, honestly, probably as well as strong, which is a lot of people that I know and that I talk to on the... left for lack of a better word. And to me, I think what people call left economic politics is actually winning politics. But a lot of people on the left have this now post-traumatic. We invest our emotions in a guy and we contribute to a guy or woman or anybody, you know, I mean, but a person, I mean guy in the non-gender. we go all out for John Fetterman we go all out for this one or that one and then uh then they turn around and it's almost like uh you know the democratic board collective uh wraps its arms around them or even worse they go full John Fetterman or full tulsie uh and go all the way the other other side and so

This is why I say it's a tough question. How can you reassure those people that if they back you and give you their all, you'll be true to your values once you get to Washington? John Fetterman is the bane of my existence. No, no, no, it's okay. It's like, oh, no, that man's name comes up to me far more than I would like it to. I'm going to say a couple things. One, there were signs, you know, with people like Tulsi Gabbard and with Federer folks who clearly had. Intense political ambitions have been trying to get into politics for years. Might have had some, if you look deep enough, some very questionable or contradictory positions. This is my, as everybody likes to point out, this is my first foray into electoral politics. My background is in community organizing on the local level and local governance. That's where I put my work. And luckily here in the state of Maine, it's a small state, those who've been organized and kind of progressive or... organizing around social justice and economic justice. A lot of us know each other. So, and I'm a relatively known entity. People already knew of me, not in the political world, but certainly in the organizing space, which is kind of how this all came to me in the first place. This was not my idea. I was approached. Oh, really? Uh-huh. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I didn't wake up one day thinking I should be a U.S. Senator. That's insane. I make my wife and I make 60 grand a year and we work really hard. There's no, this is, this never once figured into anyone's, uh, anyone's or at least not in her or eyes like thoughts of the future. We'll be right back after this with more of our conversation with Senate candidate Graham Platner from May. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow and you're listening to The Zero Hour.

You are listening to the We Act Radio Network produced in Washington, D.C. Visit us online at weactradio.com or at YouTube.com slash weactradio, D.C. And we are back on The Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Escal. We now continue our conversation with Progressive Senate Challenger, Graham Platner from the state of Maine. The other thing is that I, if you look at my policy platform, and I think if you hear me speak, I've got a very clear political foundation to what I'm doing. This is not some, I didn't like, I'm not looking for a politics to get me elected. I'm running on my politics. And it's a politics that I've come to both through my personal experience and frankly from a lot of education. And it is, I do think that fundamentally we have an economy that requires democratization. I think fundamentally we need to reorient how power works in this country, in many ways, kind of. Take it away and take the power of money out of the hands of those who have it and have been using it to influence our politics. And this is going to be a little funny. I also part of one of those quote unquote scandals was that I used to post on the internet and talk about things. So there's 13 years roughly of me giving my opinions in a pretty unvarnished manner with language that is very salty primarily because I came out of the Marine Corps and with opinions that I held in a previous part of my life that I don't hold now because I've learned new things and changed. But throughout all of it. it's fairly clear where my my economic thinking and my economic policies lie and that's from a part of my life where I never expected anybody to read that stuff and so there is if you want to have a look into like what I actually believe it's all out there in a pretty unvarnished manner which is not always good but but it is we didn't get that with those people you know like we it's I think it's I think for folks who are interested, you can pretty much dig into the core of what I believe and why I believe it. And it's, and then on the end of this, I'll just say, this wasn't my idea. My wife and I live a very wonderful life that we worked very hard to build. It's simple, but it's fulfilling. And we have to lose all of that to do this. And this isn't worth doing to me if I'm not going to be able to remain. like steadfast in the in the change and the kind of politics i think is necessary to change this country for the better if if somebody comes to me and tells me that the only way forward is for me to become a John Fetterman i'm going to go back to my oyster farm because i'm happier there anyways so and my

Personal advice, keep the oyster farm. Just in case, coming on to that oyster farm. I'm doing, I'm working with my business partner. We're doing, we're doing our best to figure out how I can still be of some help, although it's hard with this campaign stuff. All right, that all makes, by the way, with the texts and social media stuff, I mean. I don't know. I have stuff that would probably disqualify me. The old Bob Dylan line, if my thoughts and dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine. You know, so, but let me ask another, because I do like your platform so much, and I do think there's someone that's great, and in a point of view that's great, let me ask another tough question that comes up. You talk about, you know, we're spending too much money on the military. It's got to be redirected and I certainly agree with that and too many Virginia, you know, the taxpayer is paying for too many Virginia mansions and all that. But you also... talk about shipbuilding. Yeah, you also talk about, you know, I'm not really sure we need to compete with China on shipbuilding, where it seems to be your position. And in terms of rebuilding the American military, I guess what people worry about and you do address it elsewhere, but. you know, is that well, does this mean that Graham Platner is really going to fight to cut that military budget, or does it really mean, you know, smarter, better wars, you know, in which case, of course, comes up, what's better war than the ones we fought for the last four, 50 years? But there's no, there is no such thing as better war. I've been to war. There's no such thing as better war. War is just. war needs to be like i'm not i'm not a pacifist but i'm but i'm but i'm absolutely at this point effectively in it like anti-war in my thinking i i've it's very difficult for me to find good examples outside of a couple in history in which the amount of suffering and in death that is expended ever works out well for working folks it never seems to so when it comes to when I talk about rebuilding the US military what I essentially mean is the US military in its current state is It is made not really for national defense. It is made for imperial conflict. It is made for military adventurism. And it's all made specifically around the concept of making somebody money. The national defense should be a national project, not a corporate project. The, and I do believe that in the modern age of nation states, that, yeah, it would be.

It would be hard to say that a country does not need to defend itself in some form or fashion. But I do think that we have a military that was not really built for that. We have a military that's been built to project force around the world. And that's why we've used our military as the, really as the core of our foreign policy. And that needs, I firmly believe that needs to come to an end. I mean, I believe in international institutions. I believe in international law. I'm an internationalist. I'm definitely not an isolationist. But the internationalism I believe in is one in which, for instance, we use cooperation to chase corporate money around the globe. That's because that's a better use of our, of our. international policy than, say, invading Iraq or Afghanistan or kidnapping the president of Venezuela or whatever. We're talking about going to war with Denmark. I mean, it's all just utterly absurd at this point. I do think that when it comes to like naval capacity, the U.S. Navy is like, I don't want to get too nerd. Naval procurement is a, is a hobby of mine. The United States Navy because we have created this sort of this. behemoth that isn't actually focused on national defense. We don't build ships that meet the actual needs of the United States. We've we had like the littoral combat ship program, which was literally the Navy trying to get into counterinsurgency. And we spent all this money on a truly ridiculous concept. It doesn't even make any sense. And then we did it all wrong because. the companies that make money and those in Congress that want certain things and kinds of kicks back. They got involved and we wound up blowing all this cash on a program that everybody today agrees was a complete waste of time. I do think that a. that a robust Navy for a nation with two oceans on each side of it is not a ridiculous thing. But I do want it to be a Navy that is built for the actual needs of the defense of the country, not a Navy that currently seems to be built mostly to keep BIA and Raytheon and a few others in. in profit. And dare I say, uh, general dynamics, which owns bath iron works 2.3% of the Miami, excuse me, of the main workforce as I understand. So, uh, but you mentioned international relations and that gets us to another important point, uh, which is you've been strong on related to the military issues as well and how we, uh, conceive of national defense or war policy, if they're going to call it the Department of War again, which is international law. I mean, we saw the United States defy international courts, break international law. I mean, there's no ambiguity about it at this point. And we've been doing it for a very long time. I mean, that's a...

I think it's important for folks to understand. I mean, I think probably your audience does, but this isn't the Trump administration, and this isn't even the Bush administration or the Obama administration. We're talking about decades of the United States, completely ignoring international institutions. But really post-World War II, we have used our, and we've used international institutions to justify our, I would say, imperial adventurism or our economic power building around the world. But then we ignore it when we... when it doesn't work for us. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but so should the United States obey international law, international courts, should we conform to what we're supposed to be the global norms of conduct behind these laws? Yes, I mean, without question. So that would have avoided the Gaza adventure altogether. Now, I want to be sensitive to your time. So there are a couple of questions that I'll skip over because I know you wanted to talk about the organizing dimension of your campaign. That to me is very important, A, because it's how you went, and B, because hopefully it's something that will exist after the race is over. Tell us about that a little bit before you go. Yeah. So in politics, really, as a community organizer. And I got there because I read Jane McAlevy, and I took several labor. labor trainings or labor organizing trainings, which I then took out into my community and worked with other folks to really just organize around social justice and economic justice issues here in Eastern Maine. This race and this moment in American history, and I think we're really seeing it starkly now after the past few weeks especially, it's for me, this is a vehicle of organizing. A lot of Americans engaged with politics via electoral campaigns. To me, most electoral campaigns are really just elite performances, right? With all the consultants and all the ads and all the money that gets spent, they are not, and it's not, it's not, and that's not politics to me. To me, politics is about power. And power for people comes from organizing. That's it. It's the only way we're going to get out of this thing. Because the institutions that exist, the power structures that exist, they're not, they built the world we live in. We cannot rely on them to build us something else. We need to build our own power. And then we need to take those institutions. We need to use them where necessary. And frankly, I think we need to, we need to dismantle them where they're of no help. The only way to do that is to build power. For us, the campaign is about combining, building a broad coalition of labor unions, of community organizations, of civil rights advocates, of folks across the state who've been engaged in this kind of work before, bringing in all this new energy and then getting people, we want to train them to be organizers. I want to get them back out the door and engage with the existing organizations.

Obviously, if people volunteer with the campaign, that's wonderful. I'd also love if they joined whatever local group is working on local issues as well. Getting people to engage with the idea that the only reason we keep losing is because those with power keep telling us that we're not worthy of wielding it. That's the only thing that's holding us back in this is is a media apparatus that keeps us divided is all of this. But at its core, it's because we have really forgotten a story that we used to know in American history. We used to under people understood in the early 20th century that organizing and fighting was what you needed to do. That's how we got. It's how we got the labor movement. It's how we got the eight hour work day. So we got the civil rights movement. It's how we got the women's suffrage movement. That did not come around because everybody just like waited for a congressman to change it. Women did an immense amount of work and a lot of property damage. Nobody ever likes to talk about now. But there was a time in which we understood this. I think we've had that kind of stripped from us in our culture, stripped from us in our telling of history. We need to re-engage with it. And this campaign, to me, is just a really a big organizing and education project around that and trying to build out an organizational capacity, not just to win this Senate race in November, but to have an organized working class in the state of Maine that down the road we can also use because the fights to come, they're not going to be fixed with one Senate. A lot of work to do, and it's going to require a lot of people power to do it. So do I get to ask you one bonus question. Sure, we'll just do a quick one. Real quick one. How seriously did you take the Trump threat using the F word or fascism or not, authoritarianism, and how do you rate your Democratic colleagues in Washington on fighting it? I take the fascism of the Trump administration very seriously. I think it is fascism. I also think that there are a lot of people in the Democratic Party that like to use that word to fundraise and then turn around and not use an ounce of their power to truly resist, which a good reading of history shows that there are lots and lots of, I would say, of, of. liberal capitalist parties throughout history that do this exact same thing and they always lose to fascism because you actually have to fight it tooth and nail from the beginning, which is kind of what I'm engaged in here. I mean, I'll just be up front. Come November, people ask me all the time, like, what if there isn't an election, blah, blah, blah. And my answer is that what we need to do to prepare for that is exactly the same thing. The starting point is the same as getting people to go knock on doors if it's a normal election. We need to build organizational capacity, relationships, and trust. And that's what organizing is. And if we don't start now,

we may just lose the election or maybe we won't be able to fight back if there isn't one. But either way, we cannot rely on institutions. We certainly can't rely on the leadership of the Democratic Party at this point. They seem to be unaware of what's going on. And I mean, that's why it's one of the reasons. I mean, I think a lot of us saw this coming. So a lot of us have been working on this for a long time. It's one of the reasons I got in this race when I did. Well, my guest is Graham Platner candidate for Senate in Maine. His website is Grahamfor-Senate.com. Graham Platner, thanks for your time and that's for your good work. Thank you, Richard. Yeah, I hope we talk to you again. And we'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Escal, this is The Zero Hour. This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour.

And we are back on The Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Everybody, not everybody. Sometimes people wonder why I focus so much on health care costs and why the left in general has focused so much on government-run Medicare on Medicare for all. I think one of the reasons, well, for me, one of the reasons is that I used to work in that industry. And I am, I think, Trump. trying to make living amends for having done so. But the other is that I think people have no real sense, most of us, what the impact of for-profit healthcare is on all of us. Now, one of the latest... stimulus for me to be talking about this was a reason article on the way that big insurers are now trying to blame high health care costs on hospitals and drug makers now they're really their pitches that don't blame us it's the hospital's overcharging it's big pharma overcharging we're just the middleman it's not our fault now the issue here is that it's all their faults. In fact, hospitals may share part of the blame, but they're not the lion's share of it. First of all, the big insurance companies, let's just be clear, they have had no incentive to reduce medical costs because if premiums go up, actually, their profits increase. So why would they... Why would they bother? Now, we had reforms in the Affordable Care Act put it in the original law that limited their profits to a certain percentage of overall costs. But in a sense, that's a very clear sense. That's a perverse incentive because... If it costs $10 and they can only charge $1.50, why not have it cost $20? And then they can make $3 in profit. So they've had no incentive to bring down the cost. Of course, Big Pharma is loathsome. Of course, we also have these investors buying up not only hospitals, but physician practices and physician... practice groups. This has been a catastrophe for health care coverage. Retail pharmacies have been bought up by investors. I wrote about an article. I wrote an article about that some years ago. Some of the people who run these pharmacies are so highly leveraged by the time that takeover is complete because they borrow against the actual pharmacy company to buy it that. Sometimes executives have incentive to commit Medicare fraud and things like that. So the entire system is broken. We need to drain the profit motive out of every part of the health care delivery chain, is my view. And how is this affecting us in our daily lives? And why do I say that people don't notice it? Because family insurance for the vast majority of Americans.

who get their coverage through the employer. The total cost for that reached an average of $27,000 last year. And it's not going to go down this year, this from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is a good health research group. $27,000, but people don't see it, first of all, because their employer pays a certain part of it. You might say, well, what do I care of my employer pays something? Well, then they pay you less, okay? And the employee contribution has been soaring. It's now an average of almost $600 a month just for the premium alone. And then we're finding more and more that health insurance has huge deductibles, thousands of dollars. out-of-pocket costs are popular, are widespread, certainly not popular. And the vast majority of Americans under 65, that's about 180 million people do get their insurance through employers. So this is racing I had in terms of costs. And no end in sight. This is why I've always said if you let me sit down with or anybody who knows the topic with any family in the country to really. have a talk around the kitchen table about what this system is costing you, I could convince only 90% of families to want to support Medicare for all. In fact, a majority do support it. The only ones who wouldn't support it would be the billionaires who would finally have to pay their fair share. We'll be right back after this.