Graham Platner’s challenges Susan Collins in Maine.Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get The Daily Prospect Monday through Friday. [link removed]

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**AUGUST 26, 2025**

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Our politics are at an inflection point not seen since the first Gilded Age. With the Democratic Party lost in the wilderness, and various factions warring over its future, I wanted to interview Graham Platner [link removed], whose insurgent bid against Maine Sen. Susan Collins caught fire on social media last week. Like Dan Osborn’s surprisingly strong independent run in my home state of Nebraska last year, Platner has a background and message that echo the standard-bearers of the populist movements that shattered the corporate-friendly bipartisan consensus of the late 19th century. His campaign will likely be a bellwether for whether Americans across the political spectrum are hungry for a similar revolution.

**–Austin Ahlman, reporter and political analyst, Open Markets Institute**

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COURTESY GRAHAM PLATNER FOR SENATE

Maine’s Populist Senate Candidate Thinks We Are in a New Gilded Age [link removed]

Veteran, oysterman, and first-time political candidate Graham Platner’s U.S. Senate campaign against Maine Republican Susan Collins **kicked off** [link removed]**last week** [link removed] to an **impressively strong reception** [link removed]. His **launch video** [link removed] has racked up millions of views across social media platforms. He has embarked on a media blitz that has run the gamut from **independent progressive media outlets** [link removed] to **bookings on CNN** [link removed], and his campaign has boasted recruiting over 300 new volunteers a day since his announcement. He plans to further capitalize on that momentum with a Labor Day rally with Bernie Sanders in Portland.

In an interview with the

**Prospect**, Platner argued that the energy around his candidacy is the latest indicator of a growing hunger for new approaches from a Democratic coalition that is stuck in the wilderness after being routed by Trump last November. “Working-class people in this country feel like they’re not being represented … both by policy and by the structure of our system,” he said. “The only way we’re going to get that is by sending up fighters from the working class who are willing to fight for the working class. And I’m getting the feeling from the response to our announcement that I was not the only one who felt that way.”

Platner joins a growing wave of populist Senate candidates who are challenging modern understandings of political labels by forefronting anti-establishment, anti-corporate, and distinctly localist politics and policies. Fellow travelers include Dan Osborn, running for Senate against Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, whose insurgent independent bid against Ricketts’s Republican colleague Deb Fischer last year saw him overperform Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by 14 points overall and by more in ultra-red rural areas across the state, and Nathan Sage, who is mounting a Senate bid for the Democratic nomination in Iowa on a similar **platform** [link removed].

Each candidate has taken a slightly different approach to threading the needle in their appeals to liberals, conservatives, and disaffected nonideological voters who loathe the establishment class of both parties. But all have emphasized the need to revitalize small local businesses and labor unions, rein in the power of big corporations through strong antitrust enforcement, and implement aggressive new taxes on the wealthy to fund stronger social benefits. Their strategy echoes the approach of the Greenback, Granger, and Progressive movements that rose to prominence and remade the politics of both parties during the first Gilded Age, in response to the extreme concentration of resources and power that defined the late 19th century. 

According to Platner, America has entered a new gilded age [link removed] and needs a politics that can meet the moment. “I think the comparisons between the late 19th century and now are apt: vast amounts of wealth and regulatory structures that in no way, shape, or form keep that wealth in check,” he told the

**Prospect**, pointing to the power people like Elon Musk and other prominent Silicon Valley leaders have over the current administration [link removed] and, to a lesser extent, the Democratic Party establishment. “Part of what this candidacy is is a reaction to that.”

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