Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat, had twin events demonstrating his strong support among the LGBTQ+ community this week.
The candidate is facing off against longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November, with control of the Senate at stake. Platner won the Democratic primary earlier this month with 72% of the vote.
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On Saturday, Platner walked in the Portland Pride march and was welcomed like a rock star by attendees, said Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, a trans rights organization. The activist said thousands of attendees greeted the progressive Democrat along the route.
“Someone came up to me in a bar after and was like, ‘It was like seeing Madonna,’” Hack shared. “There is no candidate I’ve seen who’s united both local organization leaders and rank-and-file folks in the way that Graham does.”
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Hack’s group, a PAC dedicated to electing trans rights advocates, joined those organizations with its own endorsement of Platner this week.
“We are super excited to endorse Graham in his race for Senate,” Hack told The Advocate in an interview with the candidate.
Shoring up his support among the LGBTQ+ community, a key Democratic constituency, has been a priority for the candidate since he took heat last year over past Reddit posts freely using offensive terms like “f**got.”
Platner called the language “indefensible” and apologized.
“Today I find that stuff abhorrent,” Platner said in October. “And I am sorry that I ever used it.”
The crude posts aside (and there were many), Platner has been steadfast and vocal in his support for the LGBTQ+ community since the start of his campaign. Sunday’s march was no different, with the candidate decked out in a power rainbow t-shirt, Mardi Gras beads, and a button declaring “Protect Trans Kids.”
There was no equivocation in his wardrobe choices, or his indictment of Republicans over attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.
“This is just a mechanism of people with a lot of money trying to come in and get us all divided around culture war issues so we don’t sit around and talk about raising their taxes,” he said.
“When you stand up for one group’s rights, you’re actually standing up for everybody’s rights, which I firmly believe in,” Platner said in the interview.
Platner also had words for Democrats who’ve dialed back their public support for the victims of President Donald Trump’s anti-trans crusade.
“You cannot treat politics as a game in which you can occasionally sell people out or occasionally just kind of push people under the bus for short-term gains,” he said. “A politics that’s willing to sell anybody out is eventually going to sell everybody out.”
“You can either be a coward about it, and you can play into their game, or you cannot be a coward, and you can understand that trans rights are human rights,” he said. “Human rights cover absolutely everyone.”
The candidate called MAGA’s obsession with trans people an “invented moral panic” designed to divide the working-class, and he said Democrats have no choice but to call it out. “I have no patience for this kind of mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy thing on this,” he said.
“I don’t care if they attack me,” he said of Republicans and too-timid Democratic insiders alike.
“If people want to come after me and say, ‘It’s a bad thing that you think people should be free and equal and treated with dignity,’ let them make that argument.”
“That’s the argument of a fascist. That’s the argument of a bigot,” Platner added. “And if fascists and bigots hate me, then I welcome that.”
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