Barack Obama’s former campaign manager Jim Messina lavished praise on Graham Platner’s victory speech after the Maine Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday, even as the candidate faces multiple controversies.
Messina’s Reaction
“You’re seeing a star is born, and you’re seeing how a guy who no one had heard of a year ago, even in Maine, no one had heard of him, just beat the incumbent governor in a primary, and so I thought it was amazing,” Messina told MS NOW’s Jen Psaki.
Platner, a progressive Democrat, defeated Governor Janet Mills and professor David Costello. He will now face Republican Senator Susan Collins in the general election this November.
Scandals and Allegations
Platner is facing backlash on multiple fronts, including a tattoo that resembles a Nazi symbol, old Reddit posts about sexual assault in the military, and allegations of sexting women while married to his current wife. A recent New York Times report also highlighted what some described as Platner’s “unsettling behavior” in the past, including one woman, a Virginia conservative, who described him as abusive.
In response to the allegations, Platner admitted he “was a far from perfect boyfriend” to those women and was in “a dark place.” He later expressed confidence that his voters would stand by him.
“I’m still far from perfect, but every day I wake up and try to be a little better, a little kinder, than I was the day before,” Platner said following his victory Tuesday night. “If you give me a chance, I will be a senator for the people who cannot afford to buy a senator.”
Speech Praised as ‘Master Class’
Messina told Psaki that Platner’s speech was “a master class.” He added, “I don’t know if he wrote that or who wrote that, but that was, Jen, really good.”
Messina called it “perfect political theater” when Platner told his supporters, “If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and our country, then you must also believe that people can change. The reason I believe that is because I have lived it.”
“Now the national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by,” Platner said. “But in trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us.”
Comparison to Obama’s 2008 Campaign
Messina, still awed by Platner’s speech, drew parallels between the Democratic candidate and Obama’s 2008 campaign. “There’s nothing that people get more mad about a broken political system, and they realize the deck is stacked against them, and they realize why the deck is stacked, because of money,” Messina said. “And so that line, I thought was a brilliant political move, and I think it’s a guy who understood the moment he was in.”
