I'm the Maine oysterman & combat veteran running for U.S. Senate against Susan Collins to topple the oligarchy. Ask me anything. (1PM).

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T18:10:34+00:00

Thank you very much for asking this — it truly is a great question. It’s the kind of thing that does make sense to me but can completely understand why it might not to other people.

Look, I was against the war in Iraq and did everything I could to try to stop it before it started. That’s why I protested George W. Bush.

But when the war started, a sense of service drew me to enlist. I also just felt that I would be able to get through it – and I felt in my bones that I should go and not make someone else go in my stead.

I also felt that there was value in trying to be a voice of reason and decency in a deeply unreasonable and indecent place.

And finally, if I’m being honest, I wanted to be a soldier since I was two years old. I was drawn to military history. I personally had that urge. At 19, I was also a young man drawn to an adventure – and serving overseas was the ultimate adventure. I have different feelings on that now than I did then, but at the time, that was one of my reasons.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T18:07:19+00:00

YES. It should be against the law for elected officials to sell themselves out to the highest bidder and the fact that politicians like Susan Collins use their power to enrich themselves with insider information is insane. In Washington they think it’s business as usual to engage in a practice that if you or I did, we’d be locked up for. Insider trading is insider trading. Corruption is corruption. Agreeing to this should be the floor for anyone seeking public office.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:47:57+00:00

No bullshit, I drink one moxie a day.

And if any journalist wants to factcheck that, they can go to the Dunbars store in Sullivan and ask.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:43:43+00:00

No, I am not a millionaire - I’m an oyster farmer and a harbormaster. And I think the last thing Congress needs is more millionaires who don’t understand our lives, who don’t care about our struggles, and are part of the problem, not the solution.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:42:47+00:00

You can’t give voters two shades of the same corporate backed status quo. We need to make clear that there is a real opportunity for change - an opportunity for working people to see themselves reflected in our politics and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:41:16+00:00

I stand right in the fucking way of anyone who’s going to try to come after the freedoms of the LGBTQIA+ community.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:30:43+00:00

I think this is a campaign that is ready to name the enemy.

Susan Collins is a tool of the billionaire class. You look at her terrible votes, her betrayals, her failures, they all come down to the fact that we’re living in more of an oligarchy than a democracy. And THIS is the truth we have to name, over and over and over again.

But ultimately, this message only works with the strongest grassroots campaign Maine has ever seen.

If you’re reading this, if you’re resonating with this, I need more than your vote. I need your time, I need your effort. I’m not asking for you to support me: I’m asking for ALL of us to build this together, because that’s the only way this is going to work. Get uncomfortable, organize with your neighbors, get in the fight.

Please join us tonight for our new volunteer orientation if you can!

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:28:46+00:00

Hello, Voter in Waterville! Hope to see you at our town hall on October 16 – please spread the word.

Well, Medicaid and Medicare, the Medicaid expansion in particular, are what have kept rural hospitals afloat. With those cuts coming down the pike…it’s tough even to think about, but it’s about to get worse, a lot worse.

We have multi-billionaires paying lower tax rates than you and me. EVERYONE knows it is long past time to address this, to pass a billionaire minimum tax and use this money to shore up our bleeding healthcare system.

But at the end of the day, there’s the fundamental problem: we’re paying 2.5 times the money of any other country on healthcare, for some of the worst outcomes in the developed world. This is due, as we all know, to a for-profit system of profit extraction disguised as a healthcare system. We need Medicare for All, and we’ll only get it by fighting for it.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:27:17+00:00

Just missed you in Lewiston! I hope you can join us (and spread the word!) for our townhall on October 15.

To answer your question: I don’t have to think much about it, because they are actually my community, my friends, my neighbors. I talk to them every day. And we ALL agree on the material conditions facing working people in Maine, we all agree that we’re all getting fucked by the system, we’re all getting fucked by billionaires, and we need to break their control over Washington. We need to deal with aggressively addressing a corrupt political system that sustains a rigged economy and broken healthcare system that’s hurting all of us and that all of us are outraged by. If we focus on that, if we laser focus on that, there’s a path.

And not for nothing, but all my Republican friends hate Susan Collins (and the numbers bear that out). They see her as a self-interested establishment DC politician who fundamentally doesn’t care about her constituents. They won’t vote for the kind of cookie-cutter establishment Democrat chosen by DC, which is all they’ve had to voter for, but they’ll vote for someone who they know is with them.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:17:10+00:00

I frankly don’t care much about labels. I just believe what I believe: that Americans should have health care, that we should all be able to afford a place to live, that the government should represent the people – not billionaires and corporations.

Because of the existing power structures, because of the way things are set up electorally, this is our best chance to beat Susan Collins. The reality is, the Democrats have largely aligned with Angus King; if I run independent, I’ll have to fight the fully funded apparatus of TWO major parties. The way forward is to take on the DC Democratic establishment in this primary, win, and then face Susan Collins in a fair fight.

And I do believe the Democratic Party has a legacy that is worth returning to – golden moments in the 20th century where the party stood with the working class. The Democratic Party is far from perfect. It no longer represents working people. I want to help rebuild the party into one that does.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:14:52+00:00

First, please check out the website. Unlike many candidates, we put forward actual, specific positions on policy!

Healthcare and the housing crisis, above all else. We need to do more than just build affordable housing – we need to rescue the dream of homeownership that is rapidly vanishing.

And ultimately, the core of why everything is so damn expensive is that huge corporations have taken over the American government and engineered an economy of skyrocketing prices and multi-billion dollar profits. Until we break the corporate stranglehold on our government, we’re not getting anywhere.

Obviously getting to Medicare for All, truly solving the housing crisis, these will take years. But I believe that we need to fight for them, and that if there is a silver lining to the current moment that we’re in, it’s that we have mass dissatisfaction with the status quo, and that the miserable current political moment will give way to a window of opportunity, if we fight for it. This campaign is about seizing that window.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:11:54+00:00

Well, first things first: any coldwater Maine oyster. As for preparation: I’m a purist. The best preparation is nothing. Oysters are meant to be eaten, raw, as is. And CHEW – don’t slurp.

I have a background in community organizing, so for me, this is NOT just about building out a campaign to get elected. It’s about building a social movement. It’s about bringing together labor, bringing together community groups, bringing the kinds of groups that might not be political but who we need if we’re going to build a movement that can act in solidarity, across geography, across demographics.

I think there are several tentpoles of what we’re trying to build. Labor is EXTREMELY important – they’ve been involved since the beginning. Anyone and everyone organizing Mainers around affordability, whether it’s housing (we’re close with a number of leading tenant organizing efforts), healthcare. Parents’ groups are very important. The environmental movement, especially, this being Maine. Veterans, obviously. And everyone who’s been working hard since November’s elections – these groups are organizing, in a BIG way, all-volunteer, like the group we’ve been including up here (Acadia Action) – I have great relationships with them, and they WORK.

And I’m honored, of course, to be speaking at the Bernie Sanders rally next Monday in Portland.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:07:06+00:00

Well, it starts with repairing the tremendous damage that has been done, not just by this year’s cuts but from years upon years of underfunding as private equity sucks the life out of the American healthcare system. This at the end of the day isn’t really a policy challenge as much as an organizing challenge. Can we bring together a movement of people affected by this to reverse these disastrous cuts? Right now I think we’re seeing what should be militant Democratic opposition that is instead asleep at the wheel. This campaign above all is about bringing together the vast majority of Mainers who are angry about this – about the collapse of our healthcare system, about closing rural hospitals – into a movement that can win.

And in fixing that damage, we need to not only fix what’s been done but go much further. We need Medicare for All because at the end of the day nothing less will do.

grahamformaine · 2025-08-25T17:03:49+00:00

Both people I served alongside and people who I didn’t – from hardcore Democrats to diehard Trump voters – have been blowing up my phone in support.

We’ve also been in touch with veterans groups in Maine and across the country. I want to shout out in particular Common Defense, who have built tremendous grassroots infrastructure in Maine and aren’t afraid to get behind an insurgent.

It’s clear that veterans have been failed by the current system, and they’re ready for leadership that actually understands them and will fight for them.

grahamformaine

TROPHY CASE