Marine Turned Oysterman Graham Platner Is Ready to Fight Trump. Will MAGA Men Join Him?

If you’re bemoaning the anemic pushback that Donald Trump is getting from Democratic establishment and tracking the subsequent primary challenges springing up across the country, you’ve probably heard of Platner, 41, an oyster farmer who lives with his wife, Amy, in an eastern stretch of Maine off Frenchman Bay. A Democratic candidate for Collins’s Senate seat, he is a rising star of the second Trump era. If in the first Trump term, Democrats lionized suburban women and argued that the swing counties just outside of major cities were the key to dethroning Republicans and turning the tide on MAGA, 2025 has a distinctly different flavor to it. Pink pussy hats are out, as are #MeToo-style vows to confront toxic masculinity. In are the men themselves: Donald Trump performed well enough with male voters, those under 30 in particular, that some Democrats now openly fret they’ve lost a whole gender. It wasn’t just white men, in 2024, flocking to Trump. Black, Latino, and Asian men all drifted rightward, and Joe Rogan’s endorsement of Trump led many on the left to ponder how they could find their own version of Rogan—a muscle-bound, heavily tattooed MMA enthusiast—to combat the GOP.

Platner, who has raised $3.2 million in less than two months and attracted overflow crowds to his campaign events, is not a famous podcaster or stand-up comedian, but he’s got the forearm tattoos and the visible muscle. He’s a firearms instructor and competitive pistol shooter who was a machine gunner in the Marine Corps. (“I do think that when I go to the United States Senate,” he says, “there will be no senator in the history of the United States who has more competency and familiarity with firearms than me.”)

For Democrats, progressives in particular, who dream of turning MAGA men left, Platner is deeply alluring. Democratic elites have, of late, fixated on winning back men, but they’ve often focused on style over substance, hoping the facial hair and the ink and the ability to shoot a gun is enough. Platner is making a slightly different bet: that policy will have to matter most of all. He’s a proud economic populist who bashes the oligarchy, supports single-payer healthcare, and wants to end all military aid to Israel, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians during their invasion of Gaza. In a state that barely numbers a million people, many have already heard of Platner, and he’s won an endorsement from Bernie Sanders. He’s been a candidate, remarkably, only since August.