Why rural Maine may back Democrat Graham Platner’s populism − but not his party

Every limited years Democrats try to convince themselves they ve ascertained the one a candidate who can definitively speak fluent rural who looks and sounds like the voters they ve lost In that hope was pinned on Tim Walz the flannel-wearing Midwestern nice governor whose small-town roots were supposed to unlock the rural Midwest for a Harris Walz success It did not Now those expectations have migrated to New England onto Graham Platner the tattooed veteran and oyster farmer from Maine who swears from the stump wears sweatshirts instead of suits and various believe could be the party s blue-collar savior against Sen Susan Collins the Republican incumbent running her sixth campaign for U S Senate I scrutiny rural politics and live in rural Maine I m skeptical whether Platner can reach the independents and rural moderates Democrats need But I also see why people think he might He s speaking to grievances that are real measurable and decades in the making Platner represents Democrats anxieties about class and geography a projection of the authenticity they hope might reconcile their national brand with rural America On paper he s the kind of figure they imagine can bridge the divide a plainspoken Mainer But his story cuts both avenues He s the grandson of a celebrated Manhattan architect his father is a lawyer and his mother is a restaurateur whose business caters to summer tourists He attended the elite Hotchkiss School It s a life of silver spoons and salt air That tension mirrors the Democratic party itself led and funded by urban professionals who are increasingly aware of just how far they strayed from their working-class roots If Platner is to prevail he must assemble a coalition that expands beyond what the party has become concentrated in urban and coastal enclaves financed nationally and culturally distant from much of rural America Yet Platner s immediate hurdle isn t rural Maine at all It is the Democratic primary and those voters do not live where his campaign imagery is set Crowd members at a town hall meeting in the southern Maine town of Ogunquit listen to U S senatorial candidate Graham Platner on Oct Sophie Park Getty Images Opportunity zone In nearly in registered Democrats in Maine lived south of the state capital Augusta That part of the state would not constitute an urban metropolis anywhere else in the U S but it is a drastically different world than the one Platner is fighting for The party s gravitational center sits in Cumberland and York counties Greater Portland and the southern coastal strip That electorate is more educated affluent and urban than the state as a whole clustered in Portland s walkable neighborhoods college towns such as Brunswick and artsy coastal communities that swell with summer tourists Southern Maine closer in feel to Boston s suburbs than to the paper mills and potato fields up north is where Democrats are already strong Collins vulnerability lies instead among independents in small cities and towns in deindustrialized and rural counties drifting rightward for two decades The U S Senate race one that nearly every analyst myself included thought Collins was doomed to lose to Democrat Sara Gideon makes that reality clear Collins outperformed Donald Trump in every county She built commanding margins in rural Maine offsetting Democratic gains in Portland and the southern coast Her real breakthrough came in the kinds of small towns where Trump lost and she won or closed the margin Ellsworth Brewer Machias Gardiner and Winterport Those former mill towns and operation hubs once anchored the Maine Democratic Party They re home to exactly the kinds of voters who in principle might give someone like Platner a hearing not deeply ideological modestly skeptical of both parties and wary of national polarization But they are also the voters least represented in the Democratic primary electorate or the donor class fueling Platner s campaign Doing it as a Democrat According to the majority of newest Federal Electoral process Commission figures only about of Platner s haul has even come from inside Maine The nationalization of campaign finance is becoming more common for U S Senate candidates But there are two differences worth noting Platner s in-state share is higher and more geographically diffuse than Gideon s campaign Then in what became Maine s preponderance expensive Senate race just of Gideon s war chest was homegrown Preponderance of that Maine money was heavily concentrated in Portland and the southern coastal corridor While of Gideon s Maine total fundraising amount came from the three southernmost counties of Platner s current in-state funding is from outside the urban-suburban core of southern Maine That divergence matters It suggests that while Platner s campaign is still fueled by national money its local base however small extends beyond the usual Portland orbit And there is a reason Platner s message has not been dead on arrival The economic populism he s advancing speaks directly to the material frustrations a multitude of rural residents express frustration with corporate consolidation rising costs and the feeling that prosperity never reaches their communities The Cooperative Voting Review shows that rural independents and moderates often share progressive instincts on precisely these issues Large majorities of rural moderate independent New Englanders endorsement higher taxes on the wealthy and expanded physical condition coverage Platner is emphasizing those issues corporate power medical costs infrastructure wages where the urban rural divide is narrowest Platner may be closing that gap In an October survey of likely Democratic primary voters named him as their first choice for the Senate nomination While that endorsement has likely changed in the aftermath of two controversies his chest tattoo that resembled a Nazi icon and latest posts on Reddit including one in which he says rural people authentically are stupid and racist that poll s most of notable finding is the consistency of advocacy across income and development levels Still while his message may bridge income and guidance the biggest obstacle facing Platner is the simplest one He s trying to do all of this as a Democrat Hearing not speaking Being anchored in metropolitan and professional networks far removed from rural life shapes not only what Democrats stand for but how they speak focusing on moral and cultural commitments that resonate nationally but feel abstract in smaller locally based communities That s why even an economically resonant message struggles once it meets the national brand Rural independents and moderates often agree with Democrats on taxes robustness care and wages Those alignments fade when strategy is framed through the institutions and moral language of a party several no longer see as compatible with rural means of living It s not clear yet how Platner will respond on issues that don t poll well in rural Maine environmental regulation gun control or immigration where loyalty to the national agenda has undone a multitude of would-be reformers before him And that schism is not because rural voters misunderstand their self-interest or because racial dog whistles have led them astray It is hostility toward a party that with rare exception sees the future as something rural America must adapt to not something it should help define That is the danger of treating biography as the cure to a decades-long realignment Platner might be as close as Democrats have come in years to a candidate who can talk credibly to rural voters about power place and approach But he still has to do it while wearing the scarlet D the weight of a party brand built over generations Whether he wins or loses his campaign already points to a deeper question Can Democrats do more than rent rural authenticity Put more bluntly the real test is not whether Platner can speak to rural Maine it is whether his party can decisively learn to hear it Nicholas Jacobs Goldfarb Family Distinguished Chair in American Leadership Colby College Institute for Humane Studies This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license Read the original article The post Why rural Maine may back Democrat Graham Platner s populism but not his party appeared first on Salon com