Democrats want us to focus on Graham Platner’s policies. He fails Maine there, too
Now that Graham Platner is officially the Democratic Party’s chosen candidate to face Sen. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins this November, his campaign staff and the far-left establishment that back him will undoubtedly spend the next five months trying to contain the fallout from his personal history.
They will ask voters to look past the domestic abuse allegations, the rhetoric glorifying political violence, the racially charged comments and the Nazi tattoo. They will argue that those controversies are distractions and urge Mainers to focus instead on the issues facing our state.
As a Republican serving in the Maine House, I wholeheartedly agree.
Because when Mainers look beyond the colorful Platner headlines and turn their focus to his policies, they will find an extreme version of the same progressive agenda that has already made life harder for working families across our state.
The past eight years of Democrat leadership in the capital of Augusta have created a cost-of-living crisis where nearly half of Mainers struggle to make ends meet. In just eight years, the state budget has nearly doubled from $6.7 billion to $12 billion while Mainers have been hit with 32 new or higher taxes and fees to pay for it.
Platner’s answer to the rising cost of living is even more taxes. And not just one or two targeted increases. No, his plan includes an entire platform built around new wealth taxes, higher taxes on investment income, expanded payroll taxes, new federally funded programs and a dramatically larger role for Washington in managing the economy. As wealth flees the state under this oppressive tax model, more middle-class Mainers will be stuck paying the difference.
Another reason Maine has become so expensive is energy. Maine ratepayers pay 63% more for electricity than the average American, in large part because of Augusta Democrats’ relentless push for energy policies that force consumers to subsidize unreliable wind and solar, regardless of cost. Those subsidies alone add $275 a year to the average household’s electricity bill, with ratepayers also on the hook for the expensive grid investments needed to support them.
In lockstep with the progressive fringe, Platner wants more of these Green New Deal-style mandates, which have already resulted in higher costs and less reliable energy not only in Maine, but also in states across the country.
In healthcare, Platner’s answer to challenges largely created by government overreach and years of unchecked MaineCare (Maine’s Medicaid program) expansion is even more government-run healthcare.
Today, Maine taxpayers are funding nearly twice as many MaineCare enrollees as they were a decade ago, the predictable result of years of expansion pushed by politicians who insist government-run healthcare is the answer. It clearly is not.
Access to healthcare has only deteriorated under this system. Thirteen of Maine’s 16 counties are federally designated healthcare shortage areas, thanks to overreaching government regulations like Certificate of Need laws that allow government regulators to block new facilities and services.
In education, Augusta’s policies have led to Maine spending more than ever at roughly $26,000 per pupil. And yet, the state ranks 41st nationally in K-12 education, with reading and math scores at their lowest levels in three decades. Maine families are left with no recourse because state Democrats, the majority party responsible for those outcomes, refuse to support school choice.
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Platner’s answer to our failing schools is unsurprisingly more power for the same education establishment that produced those failures in the first place, and less power for families whose kids need real alternatives.
Platner’s policy platform is simply a continuation, and in many cases a more radical version, of the same policies that have burdened Mainers for the better part of a decade. Those unhappy with the cost of living, energy bills, healthcare and education in Maine will find little comfort in Platner’s agenda. On nearly every major issue, he calls for more of the same policies that helped create these problems in the first place.
That is the debate Maine voters should be having.
Yes, Graham Platner’s controversies raise serious questions about his judgment and fitness for office. But the question before voters is not only whether they approve of his personal conduct. It is whether they believe the policies that have produced Maine’s current challenges at home deserve to be elevated to the United States Senate.