PORTLAND, Maine — A moment after stepping off the Maine Democratic convention stage Saturday night, oyster farmer Graham Platner received a gift.
“I saw these dishcloths and they’ve got an embroidered oyster and it says, ‘Shuck yeah!’” Jenny Tuemmler, a delegate from North Yarmouth, told the Bangor Daily News.
Tuemmler handed over the wrapped present as supporters and TV crews swarmed Platner, the favorite to face longtime Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in November after Gov. Janet Mills suspended her Senate bid Thursday. The 41-year-old military veteran reacted to the dishcloths with a look of excitement and thanks that mirrored the enthusiasm of the raucous, sign-waving Democrats who erupted when he appeared before the podium and on the big screen in Brick South at Thompsons Point.
“We are taking back our democracy,” Platner told the crowd. “We are taking back our economy from the billionaires. We are taking back our politics from a generation of politicians who have failed us, and from the lobbyists who own them.”
Capping off a series of speeches from congressional and gubernatorial contenders, Platner thanked the volunteers and supporters who helped him become one of the most talked-about and debated Democratic candidates in the country. A progressive whose campaign has been rocked by old offensive Reddit posts and a tattoo of a Nazi-linked image, Platner argued that Maine is on the verge of not only shaking up a Congress led by President Donald Trump’s Republican Party but creating a movement that could remake American politics.
“Maine is telling a different story,” he said. “This state has chosen to believe in redemption. We chose to love our neighbors. We chose to love those we’ve never met. They say this movement came out of nowhere, but they don’t know Maine like we do.”
Like many delegates and supporters, Tuemmler first saw Platner speak alongside early supporter Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, in Augusta. She said that she has personal experience with post-traumatic stress disorder, and credited Platner with growing and channeling “his energy, his anger, into what he’s doing now, which is constructive.”
Platner still faces a June primary against 2024 U.S. Senate nominee David Costello, who used the spotlight Saturday to press for reforms addressing affordable housing, health care, economic equality and climate change.
Costello touted his 30-plus years of senior-level experience at the local, state and federal levels. That includes substantial work for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which needs to be brought back after being gutted by the Trump administration, he said.
“Experience matters,” Costello, who criticized the Platner campaign Friday for pulling out of five scheduled debates, told delegates. “The contrast between my experience and reform agenda and Susan Collins couldn’t be starker.”
But it was Platner’s critique of the five-term Collins that sparked perhaps the rowdiest cheers of the convention.
Platner mocked Collins’ “concerns” over actions or statements by Trump over the years. He accused her of helping the president and “the [Jeffrey] Epstein class” engineer “the greatest redistribution of wealth from the working class to the ruling class in this nation’s history.”
“A performative politics that enables the destruction of our way of life is disqualifying,” he said.
The senator this week declined to talk about Platner becoming the presumptive nominee or the energy behind his campaign. Instead, like Platner, she thanked Mills for her decades of public service.
On Saturday morning as the Democrats kicked off the second day of the convention, Collins touted her track record of bringing Maine federal funding: something even critics in Portland this weekend said is an argument they’ll have to combat.
“As chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I have secured more than $1.5 billion over the past five years for projects that strengthen our communities, improve public safety, and help make Maine more affordable,” she posted on X.
But that’s not swaying Democrats like Tuemmler. She said politicians like Collins and even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York — who recruited Mills to run — had “gotten too comfortable” in Washington.
“She’s not helping us,” Tuemmler said. “She went farther right [when Trump first took office]. I used to think she was moderate … I appreciated her presence in the Senate. But now? Forget it.”