YouSaid · the spoken record

Graham Platner

lines on the record: 84
first: 2026-03-01
most recent: 2026-03-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“For me, it was the foundation of when the campaign started. One of the reasons I agreed to do this was purely to use it as a statewide organizing vehicle. With the visibility and the resources that we're going to get, we can take that kind of strategy, those kind of tactics, that kind of on the ground trust building that we do. And we can supercharge it. And we can get the labor unions involved. And we can get all the other community organizations around the state involved. And then we can bring in all these people who engage with politics via electoral campaigns. And we can train them.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No room to go into, there's no place, and we figured we just have to build the room. Once you build the room, people come into it and they start talking to each other and they start building relationships. And I mean, the way we did it was pretty non-hierarchical. So essentially like folks that get together and be like, this is a thing I care about. She was like, I care about that too. Like, go forth and make that a campaign. And it worked. Like we actually wound up like winning the next school board race. And we're still kind of, now we're trying to get candidates to run for county commission or stuff like that. So there is a, to me, that was a direct. It was a moment where I realized, oh man, this kind of power building is very real. It just requires people to really get out of their comfort zone and start building relationships.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't build that, then we're going to lose this kind of fight. And so we just started to build it. And we reached out to folks and we got a number of the other larger statewide groups. We reached out to local Democratic Committee. We reached out to, frankly, just a lot of individuals who we knew kind of had who were worked up about this because a ton of people are angry. But again, there was no mechanism. And we kind of, we realized that Especially right now after Trump's reelection, people want to do something. They want to fight. They want to get involved. The problem is, in a lot of places, there is no...”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They had people to knock doors, and this guy had himself. It's a small town school board race. And there was no apparatus to support him. There was no way of getting people to knock doors for him. He was calling around almost like frantic, understanding what was happening, like with a week until the election. And there really wasn't anything that existed. And so a number of us, we'd already formed like kind of a small community organizing group, but we use this as kind of an example of we understood that if we don't have people who can make signs and put them up, if we don't have people who can knock doors, who can make phone calls in their communities, talking to their neighbors, people that they trust or people who would trust them.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sullivan. Yeah. Technically in Franklin, but yeah, we have an RSU, so a regional school. And it was this moment for myself and a few other people where we watched this happen and it only happened because it was no organizing versus a little bit of organizing.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Break down barriers. Well, and because you have to put a lot of time unpaid labor into it. You have to believe. And you have to go out into your community, and you have to tell people what you believe, which is also hard. And it requires you to kind of open yourself up to a lot of people who, like people who I know, who you have to kind of say like, this is what I believe. And sometimes people like, I'm not into that. You're my neighbor. That bums me out. But you have to do it. We had a number of issues in eastern Maine. For instance, there was a school board race. And out of, frankly, an out of state pack came in with a bunch of money and backed a very anti-trans Canada. And somebody who had been on the board for 13 years, who was well respected in the community, who everybody lost his seat. And a month later, the school district.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hadn't been there in seven years. And I was like, okay, well, nobody has any new ideas. This is insane. And I came back and I was really kind of just at a loss of what to do. And I decided to kind of opt out. And I moved back to my hometown, became an oyster farmer, started working on the ocean, and really wanted to just check out. But while I did that, I also began to connect with my community. And I live in a town of a thousand people. It's the town I was born and raised in. I wound up on the planning board. I wound up being the harbor master. And in doing all that, I began to see like really the value of building trust and relationships and just organizing on the ground. And I also began to realize that organizing is actually not that complicated. It's just really hard. And that there is no graduate version of it. It's all 101 stuff.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Developing a deeper theory of power in which power really is accessible for people who are willing to organize and to take it in many ways in that we in our society, even in like liberal circles, still kind of have this vision that there is an elite who's worthy of wielding power and the rest of us kind of have to like, you know, let them do it. And her argument is like, that's simply not true that really power is power is for everybody, but it requires organizing to bring it around. It requires trust building and relationship building. And I read that and it kind of changed my life, actually, because I began to think that I spent a lot of time, especially coming back my last trip to Afghanistan was in 2018. And it was just to call it disillusioning would be an understatement. I was there for six months.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I forget what year this was, but I read a book called No Shortcuts by Jane McAlevy. She is a pretty storied labor organizer who sadly passed just a few years ago, which is a shame because we could use her now. In it, the book really talks about the difference between organizing and mobilizing.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think the reason this campaign has sort of blown up the way it has is I think a lot of people are getting wise to this. I think a lot of folks are like, wait a second, like this stuff that we all thought for years, we are getting a totally different outcome from what we claim we're trying to do. So are we actually trying to do the thing that we claim? Or is all of this doing something else? And when you reframe the question of like, does all of this exist just to screw working people and make somebody else rich? Suddenly a lot of decisions we make begins to become a lot more clear. And so that's kind of where I've, it's been a long journey. I mean, it's definitely not been, I didn't like have a day where I'm like, oh, I figured it out.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which as I then that kind of just sent me on a road of being, well, I'm critical of foreign policy. Why is our foreign policy like this? So I became more critical of our political structures. And once you started being critical of the political structure, you're like, well, why is our political structure like this? Buy people in power with wealth, to maintain or expand their wealth and power, generally to the immiseration or diminishment of regular working folks. And”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was not what we were claiming to do. I could not figure out what the immense amount of violence I partook in, what that did for the town of Sullivan, Maine. And to this day, no one's ever been able to explain to me. I do know that some people made a lot of money off the wars that I fought in. And it wasn't the young men and women who did the fighting, and it certainly wasn't the civilians that we inflicted just wild amounts of violence upon. It's defense contractors. And it's folks in political power. Like, it really is. That began, so I became very critical of American foreign policy.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I've always been politically, I was a big history buff when I was a kid, which in many ways kind of makes you sort of politically aware just because you're doing that. In high school, I was introduced to more critical thought, like Howard Zinn and Chomsky. At that point, but I remember reading those things and like being like, yeah, some of this makes sense. But I also still was very much like a bit of a patriotic. Young man, and I always wanted to join the military, so I had this kind of weird, like militaristic bent that I really can't explain. But since I was two, I wanted to be a soldier. Was really after my military service that I began to think much more deeply about it, primarily because, I mean, I had four tours in the infantry, and I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I really came to believe that what we were doing”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, like, there are, and then last but not least, and rather big one, I think, is I think we have to tax the rich and the governor is vetoed multiple bipartisan bills, some written by Republicans, that were trying to raise taxes on the wealthy in Maine, creating three new tax brackets. It was completely reasonable, and the governor vetoed that. And again, that just doesn't show a commitment to going after where the money is, which I think as we move into this next phase in American history, I think that that's going to have to be like a pretty foundational element of our politics going forward.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't like a foundation of political philosophy. I do not see expanding tribal sovereignty in Maine as a bad thing at all. I think it's good, and I also think it's morally the correct thing to do since we have been not good faith actors in our relationships with the tribes”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also think that Maine has a very fraught relationship with the Wabanaki nations. We have a specific law from 1980 which does not extend to the main tribes the same protections that all other five hundred seventy federally recognized tribes get. So it means that the main tribes have to spend a bunch of money on lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Because for legislation to impact them, they need to be named specifically. So they have to have people in Washington to make sure that malice, Penobscot, Pasamaquati, that that gets added as words into bills. There have been multiple attempts to fix this, and the governor has opposed all of them, both as attorney general and as governor. So to me, that is also a pretty fundamental difference around.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they have a not great relationship with the governor. To me, we need to pass the pro-act. We need to expand the NLRB or have the NLB. We need to expand labor courts and have an NLRB that actually acts as a good faith intermediary in unfair labor practice disputes, which right now, I mean, it doesn't even have a quorum right now, so it's all not yet functioning. And, like, someone who's vetoed pro labor legislation over and over and over again to me is not someone that's like going to go to the mattresses to fight for it in DC.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if anything, I'm very much a Labor candidate I believe in the need to strengthen unions. I believe in the power of organized labor within our society to advocate not just for their union members, but kind of for the working class in general. The governor has effectively vetoed every single pro-labor bit of legislation that's come across her desk. She's been an opponent of labor. I mean, right now I have, forget how many, but a bunch of union endorsements by the time I get to the primary, we're probably going to have”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that that to me just shows that it's not really about the ads or even the money spent. There's an X factor in there about connecting with people and about really being able to make people think that you are or not think, but letting people engage with you directly to show that you are like authentic. And which is why I, I mean, we hold, we've held 40 town halls, and we're going to hold 20 more before the primary, and we're going to hold a bunch more after that, like making myself accessible. A way that isn't controlled, like we don't screen questions of these things. People just come and I literally pick on folks who raise their hands, drives the comms team insane. They are terrified. But I think that's how you make yourself accessible. And we need politics to be accessible again to regular folks.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somebody left over an immense amount of money was spent on negative ads about Susan Coll Didn't do anything. And honestly, living in the part of man I live in, which is rural eastern Maine, a lot of the negative ads about Sarah Gideon also didn't change anything. It was really more about a feeling on the ground. People couldn't really connect with. With the Democratic candidate, primarily because I think D.C. came in and ran the race like an old school DC race, which is not going to win against Susan Collins. And Collins was a known entity, and at that point people could still sort of frame her as this sort of moderate. Roe had not yet been overturned, which is really important to remember.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Negative TV ads, I don't think they actually moved the needle much in Maine. In 2020. Sarah Gideon race outspent the Collins race almost three to”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Although I will say for us, the way that we kind of fight back against that is we're building an on-the-ground organizing apparatus. So we hire Maynors. And we're going to have Maynors learn how to be organizers in their communities and have them on staff. Like we want the money that we spend to primarily be spent in Maine, not just give it to some DC consulting firm that makes another stupid ad that we've all seen a thousand times. It just changes little things. But we all know exactly what they are. So by building that and by sticking to a very like. Cogent, constructive message of the kind of future we want to build, the kind of policies that are going to get us there. And a theory of power building that is also going to be necessary to get us there. I think that's how we push through all this stuff. And in my experience,”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's that. And then, I mean, honestly, we're also just going to push back on TV, primarily like with messaging, that's positive. I mean, I really, I know that once we get through the primary thing's going to, I mean, there's so much money going to get spent on this race, which drives me insane. Because if I had my way, we would just take that money and write everybody a man of check. Frankly, we'd be better off.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any of the old Reddit posts or any of that? Oh, yeah. I mean, they go great. I mean, because I explain it, and frankly, most people are like, that all sounds eminently reasonable. And I think in Maine, folks, I mean, I don't know how to say this, but when people meet me, they tend to be like, okay, so he seems exactly like a normal human being. That's helpful. It's helpful.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We very well might meet everyone in Maine. And we go everywhere. I mean, this is not like we're not doing some kind of weird math about like, oh, we've got our win number and we're only going to focus on that. Like for me, we truly need to change politics. And to do that, we have to engage with everybody, even people who we might not agree with, even people who might initially be very either resistant or hesitant or even oppositional to the message. Although we have found that when we do engage with those folks, we have a lot of common ground.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the time we get to the general, I'm going to have either directly connected with a substantial portion of the electorate or a bunch of people who are just going to tell their friends. And the way Maine tends to work is that people trust their friends and their neighbors more than they trust TV ads from political groups And part of our strategy, quite frankly, is just to cut through all of it by engaging as many people as possible and personally interacting with this. I do three to six public events a day. I mean, I do not sleep much, and that's fine.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the response is going to be exactly what it was, which is like, I'm happy to talk about all this stuff. When that whole thing started, it never crossed any of our minds to run away from it. It was just kind of like, no, I mean, this is just part of my life, and in many ways it's kind of part of my political journey. And so I'm happy to discuss it. One... What we're doing in Maine is we are truly trying to build a real on-the-ground organized broad coalition of, frankly, working class power. And in the doing of that, in a state that's as small as Maine is,”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different version of yourself, which I mean, in my experience is pretty much just like what most people go through. So it was actually very kind of ironic that. That whole thing blew up as if it was a huge scandal. And in reality, I think it actually really strengthened the campaign because a lot of people could directly engage with that feeling of, yeah, I have not, most of us have not always been who we are today. And we also have to very much understand that if we're going to build a better future, we need to keep an opening for a lot of people to change. Because if we're all stuck right now in some ossified political thought and nobody's capable of changing, then what's the point of doing any of this?”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every time, and everyone knows now. And everybody knows. I mean, like, and for me, like it's a, when I got into this thing, I'm an elder millennial. I've spent most of my life on the internet. I was well aware when the moment I said yes to this whole experience that somebody was going to come along with a bunch of resources and dig up every single thing I ever did on the internet and try to use it. Like I knew that was coming. And when it came, I was happy to talk about it because, quite frankly, I think it's a pretty standard story of people that aren't trying to get into politics or just regular human beings in general. You go through phases in life. You believe things when you're younger, you say things, you do things, and then you learn new things, and then you change, and then you become...”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mostly good. No, it's such a, yeah, it's a very surreal. And I also very much understand why, I guess the biggest lesson I have learned is... Structurally, it's borderline impossible for regular people to pull this off. Like, if you're a regular human being with not a lot of money and having lived a pretty normal life who doesn't want to just get your entire existence ripped to pieces, I can see why people don't want to do this.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has a pretty normal guy up until August. And so that's a whole wild experience. And I opened my phone and see my name. And I'm like, I don't, nope. No, no, no. I don't want to see that. It's just this very.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The time totally and like it's not going to say I understand why people go the kind of like corporate pack dark money route because I mean just ideologically I can never really grasp that But from a practical perspective, there is an element where I can see someone who might not have the same, like just sort of political foundation that I have. I mean, if somebody comes along and says, hey, you never have to make a phone call again and you don't have to go beg anybody for money, I can see someone being like, oh, well, that would mean that I could do more other stuff. Although, I mean, it's, I mean, that's not in any way, shape or form remotely worth it, but it's, and then there's just the... There's just kind of interacting with the whole media landscape and political world.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because our fundraising has been so much small dollar stuff and because frankly the establishment of even my party wants nothing to do with me, it kind of keeps all of that at arm's length like automatically. So I'm not that mad, but you're like just interacting with it. It's like, man, there's a whole industry around this stuff.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I've taken away, I mean, I was already pretty cynical about money and politics, and that cynicism has just been supercharged. I mean, it is like, and the problem is you clearly need to raise money to compete for this stuff. But there is just a whole apparatus that seems to exist just to suck up money And that has been really eye-opening. I mean, the political industrial complex, so the campaign industrial complex, whatever you want to call it. And it is this kind of like, it's a wild thing to actually interact with personally. I mean, we're lucky.”
2026-03-01 · Pod Save America · Graham Platner Isn't Backing Down · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source