This is a lightly edited transcript of the June 10 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
Perry Bacon: This is The New Republic show Right Now. I’m the host, Perry Bacon. I’m here Wednesday morning after the primaries happened in Maine—very interesting. Graham Platner has been capturing the attention of the nation. And so I’m joined by Billy Kobin. He’s a reporter at the Portland Press Herald. Portland, of course—Portland, Maine, is the other Portland, we’ll call it. Billy, thanks for joining me.
Billy Kobin: You bet, Perry. It’s the original Maine.
Bacon: It’s the original Maine. That’s good to know. So I guess first of all, I’ll start in the broadest terms possible. If you had told me last June that Janet Mills, the two-term governor of Maine, would run for the Senate and lose by 50 points to someone named Graham Platner, I would have had some questions.
Ultimately, this is a big thing that happened here, right? A big surprise. Even though Graham’s been leading for a while, stepping back, this is a weird thing that’s happened, right?
Kobin: Yeah. It’s worth putting it in that context. It was last August that I got this initial email from some guy named Joe Calvello—realized that he has ties to Zohran Mamdani, he’d been working in PR for Fetterman. I think then the Fight Agency came up, Morris Katz came up. But that initial email was like, I have this guy named Graham Platner, he’s from Sullivan, Maine—which those of us here in Maine know is a small town. I think the email had a small typo in it. It just didn’t come off as, Oh wow, this is the super-polished guy.
But at the same time, there were whispers already that the New York Times was doing a piece—a profile of this new candidate in the race to try to unseat Susan Collins. You had that sense of something’s a little different here. Jordan Wood was the only one in the race at that point. He’s this former Capitol Hill operative who worked for Katie Porter of California, actually, and then is from Maine. He was the only one in the race really at that point.
Bacon: But we assumed Mills was running, or at that point it was rumored that Mills might run, and she was the big dog in the race, so to speak, right?
Kobin: Exactly. But then this guy—all of a sudden, within a day, he had all this national press. And we were only in August. Mills was still two months away from getting in, but we thought at the time maybe she’s going to expedite the timeline, maybe she’s going to speed things up, try to jump in now. And no, it didn’t come until October. And by that point, Graham had rally after rally after rally. That was huge. He had Bernie Sanders come with him.
So again, like you said, I think it’s worth stepping back and thinking: wow, in August we were just getting introduced to this guy for the most part, and now we expected him firmly to win yesterday, despite anything else happening controversy-wise.
Bacon: You said something interesting—that the press came. So what came first? The national press came and the big crowds came? Or did the big crowds come and then the national press? It was interesting the way you framed it. Did the press get there first, in a certain way?
Kobin: Yes. Press first. And to specify, it was on an embargo last August.
Hey, I’m going to give you an interview on a Monday with Graham over the phone, and then Tuesday morning, 5:00 a.m., you can post it. Everybody respected that embargo, too. The New York Times followed it. The Press Herald followed it. I was at the Bangor Daily News actually at the time, the other statewide paper in Maine, so I followed it. Everybody followed it.
But what was interesting too is his website went live that Monday, probably as a shell. And we noticed that and were like, Should we break a story on this guy? And then we were just like, There’s nothing really on the website. So it’s just funny again how small-scale it felt at first.
But then, as soon as those first stories came out on a Tuesday morning in the second or third week of August, people really started latching on. And then Labor Day, the rally came with Bernie and Troy Jackson, who’s running for governor in Maine. And by that point, people were all in on the Graham train.
If you’re a progressive really wanting to beat Susan Collins, you felt, Gosh, finally, this is somebody who’s a little more down-home, aggressive, isn’t trying to play nice and say she’s done some good things for Maine. We’ve got to just replace her.
He was trying to say, No—she’s voted with Trump most of the time. Let’s not keep giving her credit for trying to play nice at times or be in the middle at times. We’ve got to call her out. And I think that obviously resonated with a lot of voters—not just Democratic voters, but independent voters.
Bacon: What was the initial—you interviewed him. It sounds like you interviewed him before he announced. What was the initial interview like? How long was it? What’s he like at the beginning?
Kobin: Yeah. Over the phone. I would say pretty authentic-sounding. I called him, and he—
Bacon: You had never heard of Graham Platner before, right?
Kobin: People who did had known him because of the oyster company that he runs, because he had been featured in a few Down East magazine or food-related features. And then Jared Golden actually had mentioned him in a newsletter, a news release one time—as in, Hey, I’m meeting with some fishermen, and this is this guy. But it wasn’t a politics-focused reference. It was Jared Golden just meeting with somebody.
So you notice the voice right away—the gruff voice. You see a photo of him and you’re like, Yeah, wow, he looks like he was created out of a video game for this exact purpose. He’s doing kettlebell swings in his launch video. He’s by the water.
But no, that phone call with him was probably not super long. He gave me however much time I wanted, which I probably only took 15 to 20 minutes, because I knew I wasn’t going to write a 2,000-word launch. It’s not really fair to do that for every candidate at first.
But I asked him about policies. Healthcare came up, and he brought up right away how he had served overseas. He’s a veteran. Joe Calvello’s initial pitch email was four or five paragraphs, and it mentioned he’s a veteran who feels like the system has been fine for him in terms of VA healthcare but has not really helped people who didn’t go overseas and fight wars and come back pretty broken.
So he brought that up. He said, “I feel like it’s so stupid how I had to put my life on the line just to get a good healthcare setup in this country, and how is that fair?” And then he mentioned he and his wife live in Sullivan, and they’ve struggled to start a family, and they feel like they’re lucky that they have a house—but again, a lot of it came thanks to being a veteran, getting those loans, that assistance. He said friends of his had worked multiple jobs, were struggling.
And then what I also remember is he did mention, “I have friends who are Trump supporters, and I talk to them, and we share a lot of the same worries about these economic issues.” So right away in that first interview, he was trying to say, Look, I understand people. I’m not going to bash everybody. I’m going to welcome them, hopefully, to build that support.
But he wasn’t trying to be a Jared Golden type who’s like, Yeah, I’m going to vote with Republicans and piss off the libs. I think some people took that initially as, Oh my God, he mentioned he has Trump fans. Is he going to be this more centrist-right Democrat who tries to beat Susan by running to the middle? No, it was more of the obviously populist, Bernie Sanders lane. But: I grow up fishing on the water. I have plenty of friends who are conservative. That’s what I remember from the interview.
Bacon: Did you think when you were talking to him, “This guy’s going to win”? Or did you think, “Who knows”? What did you think?
Kobin: Yeah, it was the “who knows” part, because again, you’re thinking about it at such an early stage of the race still. We only had a few names in. We didn’t have Mills in. And you had a feeling that another one or two figures in Maine would jump in the race. And you didn’t think that Graham would crowd out everybody—which is basically what happened, apart from Mills getting in the race in October. Everybody after Graham felt like kind of an afterthought, which is the impressive nature of [his campaign].
Bacon: Let me ask—is it that Graham crowded out people? Because it looks like you have nine people, five viable candidates running for governor. Did Graham crowd out people, or were those people afraid of Susan Collins and therefore ran for the easier race?
Kobin: Good question. I think it was more of the latter. Not so much afraid of Susan Collins, but also thinking of Mills, right? People value relationships in a smaller state.
Bacon: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Kobin: Yeah. A rural state where Janet grew up here—she knows a lot of lawmakers.
Bacon: Once it became clear she was running for Senate, they didn’t want to run against her. That makes sense.
Kobin: Yeah. Not the year to do it. And people who are younger especially could accept that, Hey, six years from now I’ll probably have a better shot on the Democratic side, because hopefully we’re in office. If they’re in office, Mills might only—she’ll be really old, so they could just wait another six years and then try to succeed her, or run in a primary against her if she really wants another Senate term.
So it was mostly thinking about how the Blaine House—which is the governor’s mansion—is wide open. Obviously Mills is not going to be there; she’s termed out of office. So if I’m a top Democrat, I’m going to think about that race much more than the U.S. Senate race. Or I’m going to think about Jared Golden’s race all of a sudden, later on in the year. But at that point, Jared was still running for the U.S. House, so really the Senate race was the most high-profile challenge in terms of trying to unseat an incumbent.
Bacon: So once he starts campaigning, I assume you went to some of the events. Who’s at the events? What’s the crowd like?
Kobin: Yeah, it was definitely younger. And you could tell people were all in right away, seemingly. I remember going—I think Brunswick had one of the first rallies, or Belfast—and it was at a brewery. Pretty commonplace, and Maine loves its breweries. So you got a lot of—I don’t know, just people who you could tell were younger. But then among the older crowd, it was like, Yeah, we’ve been here a long time. We’re tired of running race after race against Susan Collins and not beating her. This guy seems like he’s it.
So there wasn’t doubt. I went to this Portland rally, and it was raining out, but it was still overflowing—part of the crowd was outside in the rain, part of it was under the open garage section of the brewery. And it wasn’t a huge speech he would give. He would just say the typical: Billionaires are selling us out. We’ve got to fight back against the oligarchs and billionaires. This system has been so rigged against us. It’s time to stop pretending that things will change in a moderate fashion. We need to totally upend this.
He would say a lot of the same lines, and people would clap. It’s not like the speeches were all that different early on—obviously you want to give the same refrains so people start to associate you with certain things. But yeah, everybody there was cheering, clapping, getting shirts, grabbing signs.
And then the other quick thing to note: I wrote a story, I think last October, right before the first Reddit-related controversies rolled out, about how he signed up 11,000 volunteers in about two months. And that was probably a sign that this is one of the biggest, most impressive campaign launches in Maine history—or at least in modern Maine history. Things were a little different in 1900.
He signed up 11,000 people. Obviously that number kept growing; now it’s 15,000. We don’t have a way of necessarily always verifying that count from the campaign. But I think it was a sign early on that people really want to help out—they want to pass out yard signs, they want to canvass, start knocking on doors in different counties.
So he pointed to the fundraising total as, Hey, Janet, if you want to get in the race, by all means feel free. But I’ve got this huge setup already, and I’ve got this campaign team that’s worked in New York City for some big-time names, has ties to these other candidates throughout the country who have generated a lot of buzz before. So if you want to challenge me, good luck. I’m in it.
Bacon: Let me jump forward. So this last month—Mills has dropped out, he’s the presumptive nominee. And I guess these stories about the sexting, the text messages to women during his earliest marriage, and then the New York Times story. I guess first of all I’ll ask: what was it like for you? Because the stories of last month mainly were national organizations writing stuff. And you all, I assume, have to cover it, but it’s not your story. So what’s that like?
Kobin: Yeah, it’s tough. You always want to have everything first, exclusively, no one beating you to anything. And yet this race early on—I would say I expected that. You have that acceptance and maturity of being like, look, there are going to be national outlets that get things that we do not at the state level. And that’s fine.
A lot of it is sourcing and just people feeling more comfortable, I think, with going to a national platform and getting it out in front of as many eyes as possible. We do a good job at the state level—both the Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News. I’ve worked for both.
We’ve had scoops here and there on the race. But if you’re somebody who has claims about a candidate and they’re not good, I can understand why you want to go to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
Bacon: I guess a tricky question to ask you, but I assume these two stories were not totally—were they totally “oh my God” to you, or did you have some inkling these things might be out there?
Kobin: We had an inkling. Multiple state outlets—the BDN and Press Herald are probably the two most usually well-sourced, and then Maine Public, the NPR station, has two political reporters. So you have people on the ground here who do hear these things.
And I remember the tip was weeks and weeks ago—I don’t remember the exact time. It was like, he was featured in the “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” Facebook group, and it was apparently a photo of him and somebody just saying, “Yeah, I dated him, and he seemed to maybe be dating somebody else at the time.” And so that’s like a common, like group where, women might talk about guys who are maybe slimy and just dating.
And when you hear that, you think, OK, that’s not good, but that’s a personal thing in a way. This could be in the past. Candidates have plenty of past transgressions, and not everything is going to rise to the level of a story.
And so I think my colleague had been calling around different names—names of women were out there—and it was clear that nothing on the record was going to come right away. But then I wasn’t surprised once I heard that, first of all, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times had confirmed a story of sexually explicit text messages sent to other women.
That was the first domino. And then quickly it became apparent that the former girlfriends were going to talk, or they’d already spoken. And unfortunately, we can’t always get them on the record, because they’ve spoken to the national outlet and probably given them the assurance that you’re the only one I’m talking to.
But the interesting thing about the Wall Street Journal and New York Times story—a full weekend ago—on the sexting that his wife was aware of and had flagged to the campaign: I think that really comes back more to Amy, his wife, telling Genevieve McDonald, the now-former political director, who’s well-known in Maine political circles as a former state representative and consultant on a lot of things.
I think that did probably come through somebody on the campaign who had told a reporter about that, but off the record. And then it took months of—OK, Genevieve said she’s not talking on the record to the Wall Street Journal. So again, sometimes national reporters keep expanding the net in DC, and they get somebody to say, Yes, I’ll tell you this on background. You can’t use my name, but I’m not going to tell that to the state newspapers. I’m just going to tell you because this is not a good look for the campaign but I’m fine with a national outlet getting it.
It’s always interesting thinking through those dynamics. And I think you’re limited at times naturally by which outlet you work for.
Bacon: And then what you all did, partly from what I was reading myself, is you went out and talked to people in Maine about those stories. And what did you—it’s hard to say what does Maine think collectively—but give me a sense. Because it became a narrative where you all had to cover those things in reaction.
In some ways, what I was looking for was not what is the New York Times reporting, but I went to the Maine websites to see what do people in Maine think about this stuff—because ultimately in an election, the voters are the most important voices. So what did you hear from voters?
Kobin: Really that we don’t care. We’re upset about the coverage and the framing, if anything. And Graham is still our guy
Obviously there are clear concerns that undecided and Democratic voters who are maybe a little older—or just of a certain “I prefer my candidates have no baggage at all” persuasion—have. So they’re going to have those concerns.
They said, I don’t like this about Graham. I wish he were more forthcoming last August when he launched his campaign. Like, couldn’t you have pictured a: Hey, I’m Graham. Now that you’re getting to know me, my wife and I would like to share a few things about what I’ve done in the past, because my opponents I think are going to dig it up and use it against me. I’d like to get you, the Maine voter, to know me early on and know that I’m not a perfect person by any means.
Some people felt like, why didn’t he just let us all know—rather than try to have all these things come out over the past few months, where it was story, and then a few months pass, and then another story, and then a few months pass.
So I think that was the negative reaction, including among some Democratic voters who were like, I might vote for Mills on Tuesday, or I’ll vote for David Costello, or I’m not going to fill in a bubble on the Senate section of Tuesday’s ballot.
But most people, as the results again confirm, were like, No, I’m sticking with Graham. Look at who is in the White House. Look at these other candidates around the country who have proven examples of past behavior that are not good, and yet they’re still winning elections. I am not going to let one series of stories totally change my opinion of this guy who is not perfect and had not been serving in higher office.
So there was that anger, too. Mainers feel pretty independent, and if they feel like somebody from out of state is coming after them—somebody being a collective, national—
Bacon: The national media, I’m going to say.
Kobin: Yeah. They feel like this is unfair. And they wrote letters to our paper, too—letters to the editor saying, “Shame on you all,” “The Press Herald—”
Bacon: Oh, geez.
Kobin: —for repeating these stories on the front page. I always like getting that criticism, though. I think it shows that people are reading and caring.
Bacon: That’s good. Yeah.
Kobin: So I think it was interesting to see—including some older voters and younger voters who were like, Stop making this into a huge “bombshell.” These are only past things, and some of them are claims rather than proven examples of what he did.
Bacon: Let me ask two final questions. I guess the first is—there was a lot of, I don’t know if this is national or in Maine, but I read a story in Politico and one in Bloomberg in the run-up to this saying, “If Platner does poorly in the primary, then Democrats can force him out of the race, and by July 13 can nominate somebody else.”
I always thought that was hard to see happening. But does last night—in that he got over 70 percent, he did pretty well—you think that’s over? You think he’s almost certainly going to be the candidate in November?
Kobin: I would say yeah, 98 percent, right? It’s over. And then you want to leave that 2 percent open as a skeptic who could think, “What if something happens?”
Bacon: Something, yeah.
Kobin: What if something else comes out that is crazy, or what if—just any unexpected—
Bacon: If he committed an actual crime that was very clear, that’s obviously different. Yeah.
Kobin: But otherwise, yeah, after last night, I was like, “OK, we had already been viewing this as a November battle between Graham and Susan for weeks now.” I think this past week was just, if anything, a reminder that every candidate has to keep campaigning. You can’t take anything for granted. You have to constantly work to win over voters. You can’t expect them to just anoint you right away—you’ve got to keep interacting with them.
And then I had this thought while driving back from Bangor last night—more than two hours—just a random thought: maybe yesterday was actually good in a way for Graham, to have more of a primary night party that was like, Hey, look, we’re still winning. Because in late April, we’d have been like—
Bacon: Yeah, you wouldn’t probably even really—
Kobin: Yeah, it benefited from needing national press here. So in a way, maybe it’s a good thing. And then on the flip side, it’s obviously not such a good thing that he’s had to deal with Democratic doubts from U.S. senators who are getting national attention because they have a pretty big platform on Capitol Hill with Capitol Hill press.
So obviously the next few months are going to be, all right, you’ve got to defend yourself against these constant attacks from Republican groups who are spending big already to say, Hey, how could you trust this guy? If he’s done all these things in his past and then told us about them now, you’ll never know what’s going to come out once he’s in DC if you elect him. So I think he’s smart. His campaign team is smart. They know that you’ve got to be prepared for more. And yeah, we’ll see what happens.
Perry Bacon: So I saw one of—I think there was a Collins spokesperson who responded to Graham’s speech, and they used the words “angry.” The quote had, “Maine voters are not looking for angry rhetoric,” was part of it. And I hadn’t thought of it before. I’ve liked a lot of what Graham said, but Graham is painting America as dominated by an oligarchy.
It’s a negative speech. It is a Trump, Bernie Sanders, the country is falling apart, we need to fix it kind of speech. And Collins does tend to be more of a “we can all work together.” She probably smiles more than Graham does. I don’t know much about Maine, but does Graham need to be more positive in a certain way, or do you think he’s speaking to the moment right now?
Kobin: I think the latter—speaking to the moment. I think some of this comes from past races. And I was in Kentucky with you in the past—I wasn’t always in Maine. But in 2020, there was that widespread sense of, OK, Sara Gideon and Democrats are not really sure on the ultimate strategy. It feels like there’s some disagreement on how to beat Susan.
And some of it was, when you run against her, you need to note that in a way you might try to do what she does by winning certain projects for Maine, and you’ll work with the other side at times. So Susan has done some good work, but she’s a Republican, and we need a change, and we can’t keep having Republican control of the Senate.
And then after 2020, when Susan won again by way more than the polls said, you had Democrats who were like, Look, stop. Stop giving her credit. Stop playing so nice. Stop pretending like everything is good. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but stop pretending everything is fine in this country and that we just need to slowly keep chipping away, because we’ll get Trump out of the White House.
Obviously, Trump came back to win in 2024 when people thought there was no way he was going to win a second term. And then Democrats, in the same vein of this Maine race, felt maybe we just had to tell people, There’s no way you’d let this guy back in the White House. But look what happened.
So I think people are like, Oh yeah, we should be careful not to go against Maine’s sensible side—New England being very engaged and civic and polite. We need to always do that. But no, Graham said, No, we don’t need to keep acting so neat and expecting that change will happen incrementally. He feels differently, and a lot of his supporters feel that way.
The first attack ad, real quick too—that he put out, I think after Mills had dropped out of the race—was definitely going after Susan hard. And again, it had that tone. And I heard a longtime political pundit in Maine who had beaten Susan Collins in the ‘90s in a race for governor—which was the first race that she lost, when she ran for governor of Maine—he was like, “You know what? At first glance, this might seem a little rough around the edges and intense to have that negative tone, but I think he’s onto something with this strategy.”
And it’s a well-thought-out plan—both in speeches and in ads—on Graham’s part, to get a little more aggressive. And then of course, over the next few months, we may see some more softening of ads at times that are focused just on Graham, as in, Hey, I’m a person. This is me. I’m not perfect, but this is where I’m from—Sullivan, Maine. So there’s probably going to be that mix of more positive, lighter ads that focus on him, and then the more negative, aggressive ads that say, Hey, how is this country working for you if prices are going up and Susan and Republicans are continuing to vote mostly with Trump and let him do whatever he wants to do?
Bacon: Should be interesting. I’m fascinated by this race, so I’ll probably have you on again. Billy, good to see you. Thanks for joining me.
Kobin: Likewise. Thanks, Perry. See ya.
Bacon: Good luck reporting this week. Bye-bye.
Kobin: Appreciate it.
