Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner seems to have managed to make a name for himself well before his race concludes in next year's midterm elections. The so-called everyman who just wants to do what's best for working-class Americans [sic] has Bernie Sanders' endorsement, even (or especially) after we learned he was a self-described communist and had a Nazi tattoo.
Well, his image just took another hit.
You see, for one of these "working folks," he sure did have a pretty interesting upbringing.
Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, the self-described "working class Mainer," attended an elite boarding school in Connecticut that costs upwards of $75,000 a year. Its alumni include Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, former CIA director Porter Goss, Clinton family crony Strobe Talbott, MacKenzie Scott Bezos, and the veteran news anchor Chris Wallace.
"Graham Platner is enrolled as a first-year student at the Hotchkiss School, located in Lakeville, Conn.," a Maine newspaper, the Ellsworth American, reported in November 1999. "Platner is familiar to many through his role as the Artful Dodger in 'Oliver' and as a 20th Maine Civil War Re-Enactor." The Hotchkiss School is located roughly 60 miles from Yale University in northwestern Connecticut.
Platner has discussed his days as a Civil War reenactor: The New Yorker reported his mother "hired a local seamstress to sew a Union uniform for him to wear to Civil War reenactments."
The revelation undercuts the working-class image Platner has attempted to present on the campaign trail. The left-wing candidate, who once described himself as a communist, described himself in his campaign launch video as a "working class Mainer who's seen this state become unlivable for working people."
Platner does not appear to have lasted long at the Hotchkiss School. A subsequent Ellsworth American piece published in 2002 lists Platner as one of four students in Sullivan, Maine, who made the hour-long commute to John Baptist Memorial High School in Bangor, a more cost-friendly private school. Platner is identified as a junior who is accustomed to the commute "after three years."
"What I like best is just the education," Platner told the paper. "Being a private school, you get much more attention."
That's a very interesting quote from the Maine socialist.
After all, according to his campaign website, he specifically opposes vouchers that would let lower-income students get the benefits of that "best" education, and "much more attention."
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I don't care about him being a Civil War reenactor because I was one myself, back in the day (2nd Georgia Artillery, then 4th Georgia Infantry, for the record). I don't even care that much about him going to a private school, because again, I went to one myself.
Mine was one geared more toward upper-middle-class families, and it didn't stay afloat, closing a year after I graduated, and my folks could never have even considered a $75,000 a year school at the best of times.
No, what gets me here is that he feels like he got a better education in private school, so why is he so dead set against creating opportunities for others? Or is he just another rich kid who virtue signals about how in touch he is with the working people of America without having a freaking clue about, well, anything other than the bubble he surrounded himself with?
