A speech he intends to deliver Tuesday night when he accepts the Democratic nomination, obtained by The Post, suggests the Maine Senate candidate wants to make the election a referendum on President Trump.
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Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner (D) plans to make clear Tuesday night that his general election campaign against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) will be bitterly negative as he looks to cut into the incumbent’s standing with independents and Democrats.
Platner, according to a draft of the speech he plans to deliver at his primary night election party in Blue Hill, Maine, will label Collins a “spineless” politician who claims to stand up to President Donald Trump, only to stand with him at the most important moments.
Platner plans to directly address Collins in the speech, asking how she can claim to be an “independent voice” when she votes with the Republican president 95 percent of the time.
“She’s bipartisan, but only when it doesn’t matter,” Platner will say, according to the draft obtained by The Washington Post. “Susan Collins serves the oligarchy — her corporate donors and the Epstein class. She serves Donald Trump. She does not serve us.”
Platner is hoping to make the race a referendum on Trump — and Collins’s role in backing the president. The speech was obtained by The Post was in draft form and is subject to revisions or improvising when Platner delivers it.
A Collins spokesperson said the incumbent would focus on “her own record of delivering results for Maine.” Collins recently cast her 10,000th consecutive vote in the Senate.
“Susan Collins is a national leader with a long record of legislative accomplishments,” Shawn Roderick, a Collins spokesperson, said in a statement that touted her as “one of the most independent members of the Senate.”
Platner’s overtly negative launch of his general election campaign comes amid a spate of stories alleging that he has had unhealthy relationships with women, including claims that he sent sexually explicit text messages to women while married and had volatile relationships with women he dated before that. Platner denied ever being violent with a romantic partner while acknowledging that he had suffered from PTSD and “was a far from perfect boyfriend.”
Platner, who ran against Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) for months before she withdrew from the race, casts himself as not only up against Collins in November, but also the political establishment.
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It is a familiar argument in left-leaning Democratic politics, and one regularly used by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), a Platner backer. It is also often used by politicians in both parties when they are facing unwelcome scrutiny.
“The national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that can define this campaign,” Platner plans to say. “But in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not at all about me. This is a movement about us.”
“They will try to make this race about everything other than what it is: A simple choice for who will represent us in the United States Senate.”
Platner, during the primary, did not run a negative race against Mills, with most of his ads focusing on him, his love of Maine and other more positive topics.
Platner has run an unabashedly liberal campaign since he launched in 2025. And he hews close to those priorities in this speech, calling for universal healthcare and dismantling of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Platner and his campaign hope the focus on Collins, in this speech and throughout the campaign, will persuade Democrats and independents who oppose Trump to overlook potential concerns about Platner.
Trump lost Maine by 7 percentage points in 2024, and he remains unpopular in much of the state. Collins, seeking her sixth term in a state that has been moving left, has been careful in discussing Trump and has at times sought to distance herself from him. She has opposed priorities like his White House ballroom project and some of his judicial picks.
Platner, 41, will also make subtle acknowledgments of Collins’s age — 73 — and her length of time in office.
“Susan Collins said she’d only serve two terms. This would be her 6th,” Platner will say, referring to a promise she made years ago. “She has worked in politics for longer than Joe Biden.”
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