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- [00:00]
Ad Read Host
Foreign.
- [00:13]
Sarah Longwell
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Sarah Lonewell, sitting in for Tim Miller once again. Guy never works. We've got a great Thursday show for you. And just as a reminder, there's no show tomorrow. So to bring you into this podcast long weekend, we're going to do what everyone loves to do in the summertime. We're going to go to Maine. Our Sherpa for Maine is Alex Seitzwald, formerly of NBC News, now the deputy editor of the Mid Coast Villager, a local newspaper in Camden, Maine, a guy I have been glued to through all of the main issues over the last few months. Thank you for joining us, Alex, from what looks like a cabin in Maine.
- [00:55]
Alex Seitzwald
Hey, Sarah. Thanks so much for having me. And this is indeed my cabin office. A shed of one zone where I can escape the family to work.
- [01:04]
Sarah Longwell
A shed of one's own. I like that. I'm super excited that you're here because for all of the attention that Maine has gotten, suddenly the eye of Sauron has moved on. Everybody's looking at Michigan now. That's the new hot race. But I am dying to talk about, as the race resets and Troy Jackson gets in, you know what we think Maine's going to look like. But before we do that, the other reason I really wanted to have you on is, you know, I am a big fan of people who build new things or who make choices in this new environment to try to get at the real stuff. So I've got, I've got mad respect for what you did because you moved to Maine. I know, to care for your mom. And you joined the Villager last year. Everybody dreams about moving to a cabin in Maine. Right. And actually, I don't know if you know this, but it's actually. So it's a popular dream among the lesbian community. There's like a whole. There are many skits about lesbians where everybody's just like, well, I want to open a coffee shop in Maine. But, like, you really did it. The thing that everybody always says they wants to do but never do. You left D.C. the whole rat race started at a local media company. Why'd you do that? And what's it been like?
- [02:13]
Alex Seitzwald
It's been very different and wonderful. So as you said. Yeah, I was 10 years at NBC News, 15 in D.C. lived there since college. Met my wife there at a press conference on Capitol Hill. Also a recovering political journalist. My mom got sick in 2021, and I was going back and forth. It was Covid. So I was Working from home. Anyway, we decided to move up, thinking it would be, you know, maybe temporary, but just loved it. Loved the community, loved the pace of life and how real it felt being outside of the Beltway. And then this local paper started up, and I have our new issue, which is a politically focus, and we're. We're quite proud of this headline.
- [02:52]
Sarah Longwell
I have to say, I laughed out loud.
- [02:54]
Alex Seitzwald
You know, a little fun is. Is always good, but it's the. The kind of place that can do a. A fun headline with a beautiful photograph. It's elevated, it's smart, it's. Has a sense of humor, and it's personal in a way that covering national politics can't be. You know, I would go around the country and be one of 50 reporters, a hundred reporters at a political event, try to. Trying to write some slightly different take from the guy next to me. And here I go and cover something, and it's the only. I'm the only reporter there. And if. If I don't report on it or if my colleagues don't report on it, there's no record of it. The community doesn't know about it. We hear about things. We're accountable.
- [03:33]
Ad Read Host
We're.
- [03:33]
Alex Seitzwald
You know, when the power goes out, it goes out for us. When the Internet goes out, it goes out for us. We have a cafe under our newsroom that's owned by the same guy. Helps diversify revenue, and we also use it to connect with the community. So every Friday, I just post up in the cafe or one of my colleagues, and it's just kind of open office hours. Anybody can come and pitch a story or complain about a headline, whatever. It's great. And it feels like the way journalism is meant to be practiced in its most, you know, fundamental level. And that used to be how every journalist started. Would be at your local paper, and then, you know, maybe you would get to D.C. one day. But that pipeline has just been obliterated by the decline of local news. So I'm kind of going backwards and doing it. Took a 50% pay cut to do it, but absolutely love it and highly recommend to any disaffected D.C. new York journalists out there. Go to your home paper, go somewhere to a small town and work for the local paper.
- [04:29]
Sarah Longwell
You know, I'm from central Pennsylvania, and it's a big political state. There's a lot going on there. It's an enormous swing state. And I often think, do I go back to Pennsylvania? And then I say no. And I mean, this is the thing. Not everybody's from Maine, bro. I think a lot of us might go back if we were. We were all from. From sort of. Are you in on the coast, like coastal Maine, or is it in the. Where is it?
- [04:54]
Alex Seitzwald
Yeah, I'm on. I'm in mid coast Maine, which, it's true, it is one of the best places in the world. I'm biased, obviously, but the amount of tourists who come here, the amount of fantasizing about this place that, that we were just discussing, I mean, it. The natural beauty, of course, but also the people that it attracts, especially during COVID the big influx of, you know, really smart, interesting, creative younger families like my own who want to raise their kids in a different place. And I totally hear you. It's. It's a really hard jump to make, and I don't think I would have done it. I mean, I know I wouldn't have done it if it were not for the forcing factor of my mom and this, you know, personal necessity. So it was really a personal move first and then a professional move second. But I'm so glad that it did work out that way.
- [05:40]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, If I was alone in this world, I could see myself potentially going back. But, you know, there's always other people to consider. It's hard to get somebody who met you in D.C. married you to say, yeah, sure, I'll go back to your small hometown in the middle of cornfields. So here's the thing that ties together kind of the Senate race in Maine and you running a paper. So there's this mythology about people in Maine that they're hyper skeptical of outsiders. They don't like being told what to do by people from far away. I think I could see this with the Platner stuff, where the national spotlight being on them was very annoying to them. It probably dug some people in. Is that real? Is it real that people in Maine are kind of wary of outsiders coming in and telling them how to do their politics?
- [06:27]
Alex Seitzwald
It's very real. And I mean, I think there's. That's true in any place, but especially here. There's a term in Maine, you're either from away or you're from Maine. And it's just baked into the geography. There are families here that can trace their lineage back 13 generations to the same piece of land. And it's because of the history of this place. It's a kind of a backwater. It's not on the way to anywhere else. It just sticks up into Canada, basically. It's never had a booming economy, so it never attracted, you know, a huge influx of migrants. So you get either people who have lived here forever and their families lived here forever, or people who have come here intentionally because they want to be here and they want to be a part of that place. And it's quirky and weird in a million different ways that people in Maine often feel like the rest of the world doesn't understand. You know, people come for the summer, they see the coast, they see like a sliver of the state. And that, I think, leads the outside world to feel like they understand Maine better than they do, because a lot of people have been to Maine, you know, more than they maybe been to Kansas City or central Pennsylvania or whatnot. But the understanding you get as a tourist is very different from the understanding you get living here. And yes, that was a huge part of Graham Platner's success, especially after in 2020 when Democrats kind of came in and picked Sarah Gideon, the former state House speaker, to be the Democratic nominee. She raised twice as much money as Susan Collins, had difficulty really connecting, and still ended up losing by 9 percentage points. So this time around, when it felt like Chuck Schumer, D.C. democrats were saying it has to be Janet Mills. Given that hangover, the backlash was especially strong.
- [08:12]
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- [10:13]
Sarah Longwell
There's the way you were talking right when you did your old job and you were at NBC, you would. You're a reporter that parachutes into places. You're trying to get a feel for it just so you can add color, granularity to whatever story you're doing. And so you get this, that, like that kind of view. And then there's what I do where I sort of, I do these focus groups where I pull lots of different people in from Maine and we talk to them and we get a sense of, you know, how they're thinking about things. Because you said Janet Mills. And one of the funny things about doing focus groups in Maine was the voters liked Janet Mills. They all liked her. They did not want to vote for her. They did not want her to run for Senate, but they liked her just fine. And so, like, I feel like I got that flavor. But then there's what you're doing now, which is a whole different thing because even when you do focus groups, even when you parachute in, you can get more information than just like national political observers who look at everything through sort of a national lens. I see this happening right now a little bit in Michigan where I feel like the way that the national folks kind of look at Haley Stevens doesn't quite match how people on the ground feel about Haley Stevens. Not everybody. But like, she does have lots of people there who find her, like, very authentic to Michigan and the way that people in Maine, when I talk to them in focus groups, found Graham Platner to be quite authentic to Maine. But what is it about, like, living there in it? What, what kind of flavor do you get that's different from what any of us even who are trying our best from a way to understand things. What do you feel like you understand about what's happening right now in the politics in Maine that we can't understand?
- [11:52]
Alex Seitzwald
It's so, so much deeper and richer of an understanding that this whole experience has made me question a lot of my own reporting that I did when I was the one parachuting into a state and, you know, doing my best. And, and I, I'm not at all of the kind of person who leaves, you know, mainstream media and thinks they're all, or tries to sell the idea that they're all phony, lying, corrupt people at all. I think these are smart people doing the best they can. But you can much when you spend, you know, a few days in a, in a place and talk to people. And we all know that we are not the most reliable narrators of our own thoughts and feelings. And, you know, so you, the pole gets you one level deep. A focus group gets you another level deep. But I think living and breathing this place gives you an even deeper level where you can understand things that maybe people won't vocalize or won't even be conscious to, to vocalize, but you can kind of pick up those, those little threads. And it also feels so different. I mean, my part of Maine is different from another part of Maine. And it's, it not just made me question my coverage, but, like, what we can know, period. You know, not to get too, like, philosophical here, but personally, going to the 2016 election, all the polls, all the data, everything looked like Hillary Clinton was going to win. And it was such a rug pull that not only she lost, but this whole apparatus of understanding the world failed. And since then, for me and living here, it's been like an experience of accepting the humility that we can't know everything all the time and just doing your best at any moment to try to understand by gathering as much facts and data as possible.
- [13:29]
Sarah Longwell
This sense making of the world. I started doing focus groups after 2016 because I was so convinced that I understood nothing. Like, I was, like, I didn't. How is this possible? And what was crazy was when I did start doing focus groups with Trump voters, and I was somebody who's, you know, lifelong Republican, and I was in all these Republican circles and Everybody hated Trump. Everyone I knew hated Trump. Every Republican I knew hated Trump. They were all voting for Hillary Clinton, even if they weren't sort of saying so out loud because they were, this is terrible. And like, well, I'll just deal with Hillary Clinton and then get back to normal. The second I started doing focus groups with voters, I was like, oh, my gosh. The extent to which people feel like they know him, the extent to which people in the Republican Party really hate the Republican Party and feel really disappointed by the Republican Party. But even doing focus groups, I can feel the limitations because people sort of. They are also can be unreliable narrators, first of all, when they're, like, explaining it to you from the outside. But the thing that I know I couldn't get my hands around with Graham Platner, and I guess I'll use this to sort of transition us into the Senate race. Conversation. I wrote a piece after doing a couple focus groups about how the voters really described Graham Platner's authentically Maine. And this. This question of authenticity is very much at the center of our politics right now. It's sort of a hangover from the analysis of Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris. People did not find her authentic. They didn't feel like they knew her, whatever. So, like, this authenticity has become the coin of the political realm. And when they plucked Graham Platner from obscurity, it was like, okay, we can. We can sort of sell this guy as authentically main. And the voters were buying it, right? But as his story began to sort of unravel, was he still authentic or authentically had done bad things, or was he like a simulacrum of authentic? Like, he was almost created to be authentic, but actually, he had actually gone to a prep school and his mom's restaurant, bought his oysters, and he was a story that they were trying to tell. That's just like any other campaign. That wasn't the true thing. Am I hitting it? You tease that apart?
- [15:43]
Alex Seitzwald
Absolutely. And a lot of his supporters, all of his supporters, or most of them did, continue to view him as authentic throughout that. And class politics are really complicated here, especially on the coast, and you have a lot of people. I've called it, like, intentional downward mobility, where, you know, the first generation, like, his grandfather was a famous architect, comes in summers, and then the second generation moves here full time, but retains professional identity. His dad was a lawyer. And then the third generation goes full townie. And as long as you're, you know, working with your hands, it kind of doesn't matter, you can be accepted, you can be coded as from Maine and not from away. So I don't think that necessarily counted against him as much as it seemed like from the outside. But it did start to wear away at the patience and chip away at the idea that he was exactly who he claimed to be, which of course he, he wasn't. And to create that sense of authenticity, I think it has to be something of a simulacrum, right, because it's all, most people are not going to meet him and spend time with him personally. So it's going to be mediated through Instagram videos and speeches and social media videos. And like the guy who's replacing him now, Troy Jackson is an authentically working class Mayer from the interior of the state, which is far poorer and more conservative fifth generation logger. Like he's not from a fancy family. But he couldn't connect in that same way. He couldn't deliver that message in the same way I think because he didn't have the experience of moving through elite circles the way Graham Platner did. Like Platner because of his family, because he went to gw, because he bartended at the tune in on Capitol Hill. He could speak to reporters and donors and thought leaders and sell them. And a lot of people on the coast here are, you know, college educated, sophisticated urban expats. And it just went over perfectly with them. They, they loved it in a way that they, they struggled to, to connect with Troy Jackson. So I think to, to be authentic in politics, you do need a little bit of that, I don't want to say phoniness, but you need to, you know, it needs to be packaged just like a pop star or a movie star because you're almost a content creator at this point. But it still needs to have that core which he was revealed to not really have.
- [18:06]
Sarah Longwell
This segment is sponsored by the New York Times. Obviously the New York Times is one of our most prominent national news outlets and today we've leaned on some of their coverage of the main Senate race last year. They also did outstanding coverage of my guests local newspaper the Midcoast Villager and how he and all of his colleagues are reviving local news in their corner of Maine. I think what my conversation with Alex Seitzwald underscored is the complementary symbiotic relationship between national journalists who sort of parachute into these far falling parts of the country, but may have a more holistic beat. And we need local journalists like those on the mid coast who are deeply, deeply embedded in local communities, whether you're in search of a national or a more local focus. We need fact based reporting by deeply knowledgeable, ink stained reporters. Which is why as I follow Maine this year, I'm relying on outlets like the New York Times and like the Mid Coast Villager. And now commenters like us here at the Bulwark can decide what we think. Wherever you seek it out, whether it's nationally, locally, support fact based reporting. Moving sort of forward from the platinum of it all. Although we'll probably talk about it a little bit more. The Democrats presumptively have a new candidate, Troy Jackson for US Senate against Susan Collins. And he was the state Senate president. Do you know him? Have you like hung with him? Spent time with him a bit?
- [19:37]
Alex Seitzwald
Yeah, he. Not as much as I should have frankly, because he was sort of a non contender. He was running for governor in a very crowded Democratic primary and he was sort of a non contender for most of the race.
- [19:48]
Sarah Longwell
He came in third.
- [19:50]
Alex Seitzwald
Came in third and probably would have done worse if Platner had not kind of turned his whole campaign over to supporting Jackson after Platner secured the the Senate nomination. But the first time I met both of them was a year ago on a farm in Belmont, this little town where it was a Troy Jackson event. Grand planner had been hired to cater to the event and unexpectedly announced his Senate run a few days before this event. So he still showed up. He was catering the event. He's where he's in the back there with an apron and then he gets kind of pulled on stage and he's like, oh, this is Troy Jackson's event. You know, I don't want to overshadow it. And then just delivers this fully formed stump speech, you know, that the grand Platner that we would all come to know. And everyone came to see Troy Jackson, but they left talking about Graham Platner. And that is just such a, to me, like a perfect distillation of. Even though Jackson has the real authentic working class biography that absolutely trumps Platner's credentials, he, he couldn't sell it in the way that Platner could.
- [20:57]
Sarah Longwell
That's really interesting. So just to be clear for the, the listeners, if you guys haven't been following this super closely, he's not the nominee yet. He has to be officially nominated at a convention, but that's this weekend. But he's secur. 90% of the delegates right out of the gate. And so, you know, it was a week or two ago where we saw kind of everybody jumping in. Now they're all jumping back out. You know, you've got your. Your sort of Nirav Shah who ran for governor, Shannon Bellows, Dan Cleveland, Jordan Wood, all of these kind of main Paul names that people know. Troy Jackson obliterates them and gets. Locks up all these delegates. Why do you think he was just like, far and away the obvious choice for Democrats in the state after Platner dropped out?
- [21:41]
Alex Seitzwald
Yeah, and this was a crazy, unprecedented process. They had 21 days to replace Platner ahead of a legal deadline. And it's been. It was even shorter than that because he dropped out July 10th officially. And Jackson essentially locked it up by like the. The 17th. So in a week, essentially, is this thing where they. Each county elects delegates to a state convention that's on Saturday. And we thought this was going to be a, you know, finally a brokered convention. But no, it got all sewn up before then. Two reasons that I think Jackson just totally dominated this process and it was dependent on the process. Number one was he's the kind of natural heir apparent to Platner. You know, Platner still, despite being now Disgraced, he won 72% of the primary vote a month ago. So his message was still popular. And if you want the message and the movement of Graham Platner, minus the man of Graham Platner, Troy Jackson is the obvious next guy. They're both endorsed by Bernie Sanders. They campaigned together. They were very closely aligned. And the other is that Jackson knows how to play the inside game in a way that I don't think Grant Platner ever did. He was state Senate president, as he mentioned. He spent years in the labor movement. He was Bernie Sanders political director in 2016, and he had the backing of the entire labor movement in Maine for this latest run. So all of Platner's volunteers moved over to Jackson pretty quickly, and all the organizing might of the unions moved over to him. And that's what this came down to is about recruiting delegates, recruiting voters, and then getting a slate together and keeping your people together. So it's much more like a whip operation than an election. And I think he proved his chops there in just absolutely running circles around the other candidates.
- [23:32]
Sarah Longwell
I've been kind of at my team to be like, I need a new focus group in Maine because I really want to know, with Platner out and Jackson in, because there was this, like, quick transference. Jackson seen, like, as the heir apparent, but also is, like, less charismatic than Platner, but also has less baggage. What would you say the vibe Is, like, now, among all those people who were like, heart and soul for Platner, are they still feeling, like, great, we got Jackson, or do they feel deflated, or do they feel excited to have a new lease on life? And then in that answer, was Graham Platner gonna win? Like, is Troy Jackson an upgrade or is it a downgrade? Is kind of what I'm getting at.
- [24:22]
Alex Seitzwald
Yeah, both great questions. I think people are still feeling like they have whiplash and there's, you know, little cuckoo birds spinning around their head as they're trying to make sense of all this, because people really did fall for Graham Platner hard, like, offline people, you know. Another difference of being here versus reading the coverage. Like, the consultants were kind of the main characters. The national faction war was kind of the main characters in a lot of the national coverage. And here Platner was the main character, and people really fell for him. So there's definitely some sense of betrayal and disappointment. People are taking it personally. And there's a lot of like, okay, I guess it's this Troy Jackson guy. He seems fine. I'll figure it out. But they're not bought into him. Nearly the same emotional commitment that they had to. To Graham Platner. I think that's fine, though, to get to your second question. Like, Maine is a blue state. It is not elected a Democratic or Republican president since 1988, but Susan Collins keeps winning by being a aberration, being Susan Collins, not the Republican from Maine. So the more this regresses to the mean of just like D versus R, I think that's better for Democrats. And certainly all the prognosticators see Democrats chances improving. With Platner off the ticket, I do think he had become pretty radioactive. It wasn't until that last Politico report, the one that forced him to drop out the accusation of rape. And then, you know, patience was already wearing thin. Doubts were already creeping in, and then that just support evaporated instantly. So I don't think he could have won at that point.
- [26:04]
Sarah Longwell
So is that true? This is. I really want to know this. I just. I. You're saying that when that broke, because support sort of evaporated on Twitter and online, and people who had been going full Platner kind of suddenly went dark online. Yeah. And, you know, people were starting to do Maya Culpas, and you're watching, you know, Bernie finally bails, and the. The polls bail. But I really wanted to know when that was happening were people in Maine, like, screw these guys for bailing on him. Or were they also out too? It was the bailout of people at the national level, a reflection of what was happening on the ground in Maine from actual voters.
- [26:44]
Alex Seitzwald
There was a rump of platinum diehards who wanted him to stay in and were. I saw a lot of platinum yard signs that were still left up, you know, intentionally and texting with people. There was an organizing effort to try to keep him in. And what they were really afraid of was that the quote, unquote establishment would swoop in and put somebody else as the nominee who they were not happy with, like a Janet Mills. And that just didn't happen. As soon as the field started to merge that it was 100% progressive candidates, they all supported abolishing ICE. They all supported Medicare for all. That eased a lot of the, the concern. But I think among most Democrats that I spoke to, it really was the straw that broke the camel back. I mean, it's the kind of, you know, once bitten, twice shy, they were bought in, they believed him and. But a big part of it was the way he handled that first round of scandals, the Reddit posts, the Nazi tattoo, where he was vulnerable and conciliatory and self reflective in a way that you so rarely see in politics. And people found that so refreshing and honest. But you can only do that once, really, you know, ask for forgiveness. And then by the time the, the later stuff came out, he. It was the classic, you know, denial, blame shifting. It's the media, it's my political opponents. And that's where people started to get off the, the bandwagon.
- [28:11]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, thank you. I've been really dying for an explanation about how it went down because I had this part of me that was like, was everybody in actual Maine still kind of on board with it? But it just became impossible because of, because in his final goodbye, he was basically like, we could be in this and still win. It's just these national people pulling the plug. So I can't keep this campaign going. But it doesn't sound like that's really true. It sounds like people were on the ground, were out on him, and they're sort of like, Troy Jackson, fine, we'll take him. And you know, the University of New Hampshire poll last. They're just doing the head to heads proactively. They had Jackson leading Collins 49 to 46. Not a not huge lead. And I guess the one thing I've seen about Jackson, because now the Collins campaign, I presume, had lots of ammunition on Platner and was prepared to continue to really hammer A bunch of his sort of scandal stuff. What do they have on Troy Jackson? Is he a pretty clean guy? That. One thing I've seen is that he threw a water bottle and I can't tell if he threw it at someone or. But this seems to be the one story that they have. Like he aggressively yelled at somebody. Is he, what's he like?
- [29:27]
Alex Seitzwald
He threw it on the ground in a. Yeah, he got heated on the ground. I mean, even Jackson supporters will say,
- [29:32]
Sarah Longwell
I do that every day, FYI.
- [29:36]
Alex Seitzwald
Well, I, Yeah, so I guess don't run for Senate, for Mainland or. I don't know, we'll see. Even his supporters will say, yeah, he's not a great communicator. He's not charismatic and he's kind of a tough hang. Like he's, you know, irritable. He's got a temper. He fit it right in with a lot of people on Capitol Hill in that way. I moderated a forum with the Democratic gubernatorial candidates and he happened to be sitting right next to me and he just made no effort to, like, hide his exasperated size when, you know, somebody else was giving an answer he didn't like or I took a question from the audience even though we were slightly overtime. So he's just that kind of a guy that said, like, what else is, is out there? You know, he's been in, in politics at a pretty high level in Maine, but there's nothing like running for a top tier U.S. senate seat, except maybe running for president. So I'm sure we will learn more things about his past. One thing that will definitely get attention right away is he started his political career as a pro life, anti gay marriage Republican, then became an independent, then a Democrat, but was still pro life and anti gay marriage. Voted, you know, took votes on that in the state legislature. He's since had a big, you know, coming around and has perfect ratings from Planned Parenthood and LGBT groups endorsed by Bernie and every progressive group under the sun. And he's talked about that evolution, you know, Catholic boy, kind of of that mold of Democrats that doesn't really exist anymore like old school Joe Biden or Bob Casey. So I'm sure there'll be an effort to kind of cleave progressive support from him from that. But I think he's going to have the left pretty well locked in, given the, the Platner experience, given labor movements, given all the national progressive voices, and just this overwhelming sense like, okay, we have to just, just get over this and beat Susan Collins, and that should theoretically free him up. To focus on the, the voters who really matter. Who are the people who will vote for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket and then vote for, for Susan Collins at the next step down. And those are your more moderate coastal, largely educated, you know, middle age and older women who. That's not his standard fare. He's from like the north Maine woods way up against the Canadian border. You know, looks more like Appalachia than coastal New England. But I think he will be given the leash to really focus on those voters who really matter.
- [32:03]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, let's watch a clip because I want people just to get a, you know, a glimpse of the cut of his jib or listen to the cut of his jib if you're doing the podcast thing. So let's just watch Troy Jackson from this weekend.
- [32:15]
Ad Read Host
They said that a bunch of loggers could not take on the big landowners exploiting them, but we did. And they said a guy from Allagash could not rise to the main Senate. And I did. And now they're going to say that a grassroots campaign powered by working people cannot defeat Susan Collins. But you know what? They're wrong. They're wrong again. Power does not give working people anything
- [32:40]
Alex Seitzwald
out of the goodness of its heart.
- [32:42]
Ad Read Host
Sometimes you have to make the people and so uncomfortable that they can't ignore you anymore. We're not from the left. We're not from the right. We're from the bottom and we're rising. And I know what happens when working people decide that they've had enough. When we do, we stand up, we lock arms, we fight back, and then we win. Let's go and beat Susan Collins and send a working class fighter from the northwoods of Maine to the United States Senate.
- [33:11]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, you can see it's sort of a like B minus. It's like not, it's not horrible. But he, the thing that went with an ad like that, for people who are just listening when you, when you're watching it, they're cutting to people's reactions. And people's reactions are kind of like, I was told to sit here with a sign. It lacks a kind of enthusiasm or electricity that for some reason Graham Platner did have. But here's the thing. I say that, but that's a lot of the function of an ad and how it was cut. Graham Platner, for all of his. I've got the, the goatee and, and I'm ruggedly handsome and I look really good in a Henley and I work with my hands and I'm oyster farmer all of this, it wasn't even performative because it was real ish, but like the performative working class vibe wasn't working with working class voters. This is the thing that really jumped out in the race. And I think as Democrats are thinking about how they attract back working class voters, you know, they kind of go and pluck a guy like Graham Platner and say, this guy's going to appeal to those, that group of people. And yet he didn't. It was still the college educated, more coastal folks that were gravitating to him. Do you think that Troy Jackson, with his even like being less polished, you can, even as you hear him talk, you can hear that this is not a guy who, like you, he's not nervous exactly, but he feels a little out of his element as he's talking. Do you feel like maybe that actually does a better job with working class voters? Or are Democrats, Democrats brand with working class voters just so tarnished that no matter how working class the actual person, no matter how much from a north, you know, the northern. What was he from? Aristook?
- [35:02]
Alex Seitzwald
Aroostook, Aristook county, also known as the county because it's so massive, it takes up, you know, a huge portion of the northern part of the state, but
- [35:12]
Sarah Longwell
it's like the north woods where like you wrestle bears for fun. Right? So, like, it does pretty much. Do you think he could do better with working class voters?
- [35:20]
Alex Seitzwald
Great question. And he's got an accent, which is, you know, if you have an accent these days, especially in New England, you're going to be more working class. That's an Acadian accent, which is different from a Boston accent. It's its own thing with French influences. People would ask me, when Platner was running, is he actually appealing to working class voters? And I was like, I don't know. But he's definitely appealing to Democrats who think they need to do a better job appealing to working class voters. I don't know that we can ask any one candidate to counter these trends of education polarization and, and class polarization that are so big and bigger than just in the U.S. i mean, this is happening in Europe and Australia and other parts of the world too. So I wouldn't really expect Jackson to, you know, meaningfully change this couple decades of political trends. But margins matter. And, you know, you pulled up that poll number 4,649. I think this is going to be a close race to the very end and a way that Jared golden, who represents that part of the state and is now leaving but has been a huge electoral over performer for Democrats. Trump plus 10 district. The way that he's been able to, to win and keep winning is by going into little towns like Allagash, where Troy Jackson is from, in these towns in the great North Main woods and not win them, but cut his margin by, you know, Instead of losing 70, 30 or 80, 20, he loses 60, 40, and then you run up the score in the, in the bigger cities and on the coast. And I think Jackson can definitely do some of that just by his affect his cultural competency, if you want to use that kind of word, and of where he's from. Like no Democrat has won statewide in Maine without being from the second Congressional District. That's the, the bigger, more rural, poorer interior district, but it covers 92% of the state by land area and he is from that district. Sarah Gideon, who ran in 2020 in Las, she's from Freeport, which is the first district. It's right outside Portland. It's where the Albion headquarters is. So she was never going to cut her margin in those places and Jackson might be able to.
- [37:32]
Sarah Longwell
Just speaking of Sarah Gideon really quickly, I think there's a lot of people wondering about the polling in Maine just because Sarah Gideon pulled ahead of Susan Collins oftentimes by like a decent margin and then got crushed.
- [37:46]
Alex Seitzwald
I don't think there was a single poll that had her behind. I think every single poll had Sarah Gideon ahead into election day. Yeah.
- [37:53]
Sarah Longwell
And, and like she didn't just lose, she kind of, she got crushed. At a time when Biden won the state. How should we feel about the polling in Maine right now?
- [38:01]
Alex Seitzwald
It's a great question. And you know, pollsters have said they've adjusted methodology. That was the height of COVID so that was doing all kinds of things with response rates and messing things up. So I think we can expect the polling world to be better. But I still take it all with a grain of salt and you know, look more at maybe not the specific digit, but the kind of margin of error band. And I've always thought this race, no matter who that does, Janet Mills or Graham Platner or Troy Jackson, this is going to be a neck and neck bitter thought race to the very end. And there's a lot of Susan Collins voters. There's a guy I know calls them the silent Susan voters who are maybe Democrats or independents, but they like Susan Collins, they respect Susan Collins. They're not going to put a yard sign out necessarily. They're not going to post about her on Facebook, but in the privacy of the voting booth, they will vote for her. And that's really hard to capture in a poll or in journalism or anything else. And that's also how she operates. She's not a great speaker either. She doesn't hold big rallies. But I constantly am hearing from people who were like, oh, I was just emailing with. With Susan. I just got off the phone with Susan. She's a workaholic, you know, texting, emailing people to 2 o' clock in the morning. And that's the thing that is often missed, but saves her at the end of the day. So I think we just have to have that humility and understanding. We're not going to know what happens until election night.
- [39:30]
Focus Group Participant 1
Foreign
- [39:32]
Sarah Longwell
let's talk about Susan Collins. I want to get into the. To this particular phenomenon because I. I do wonder if something has changed between 2020 and 2026 in terms of Susan Collins's level of loyalty. And when we were doing the focus groups in Maine, we talked to a bunch of people who had voted for Biden and then had voted for Susan Collins and asked how they were feeling about her now. And we've got some clips of that that we'd like to play.
- [40:03]
Focus Group Participant 2
She brings a lot of money into Maine, so that's important. She's supposed to be more bipartisan, but as of recent, she just kind of votes whatever way they want her to sway things. And she's been, like, really pro war, which is not great. You know, sending all our money overseas is definitely not going to help us. Previously, she'd done good. I guess the money just kind of got to her finally, and they can control her now.
- [40:33]
Focus Group Participant 1
I voted for her ever since, you know, I was 18 and allowed to vote because back in the 90s, my mother could not walk from Ms. And she got denied her disability. Like, she physically could not walk. So she ended up getting a letter from our family, and she helped my mom get that. So from that moment on, I was only like 5 or 6 years old when this happened. Like, she was like my loyal lady the whole way through. I was like, yeah, this lady's awesome. You know, so. But then, like, that Kavanaugh thing happened. I'm like, wait a minute. Like, where are your values, lady? Like, you know, like the majority here, what we believe here in Maine, like, what are you doing?
- [41:07]
Sarah Longwell
So there's sort of more where that came from, but, you know, otherwise this would be an episode of the focus group podcast. We heard a lot of similar stories. People who have voted For Susan Collins in the past had nice things to say about her who this time were out. And do you feel like the vibes have changed for her from 2020 to 2026, or does she still maintain a lot of those that loyalty from people?
- [41:32]
Alex Seitzwald
I think the really important thing to understand is that her ceiling was so high that she can lose a lot of support from that and still win. So every cycle it looks like, oh, this is finally the time that she's going to lose. Because I've heard very similar to them. It's you talk to voters who say, I'm finally done with her. But, you know, in 2008, when Barack Obama was winning Indiana and nearly one Montana and Democrats were getting a super majority in the Senate, she won 60% of the vote against a sitting congressman who, you know, had no issues, nothing in his past. So her margins have come down. And maybe this will just be the year that partisanship catches up with her her regardless of who's on the other side of the ticket. But she does have this deep, enduring support, like that woman you played who she helped. There are a ton of people who feel like they have been personally helped by Susan Collins. Her constituent services are famous. I've been told many times, like, if you have an issue, you go to her office. First of the members of Congress. Every little town has a bridge or historical society or a library that she helped fund. She's very smart in the projects that she supports. They're kind of universally appreciated. She's the chair of the Appropriations Committee. So it's a lot of money. And she has these deep relationships where people feel a lot of gratitude. Like, I was just talking to somebody who said, as an example, their mother, hardcore progressive Democrat, hates that Susan Collins voted for Kavanaugh, blames her for Roe. But she's on the board of the local library and Collins really helped them get the new roof that they needed. So she's going to vote for her again in November.
- [43:19]
Sarah Longwell
That's the kind of thing I do think national politics kind of misses. Like, she is there and she's been around for such a long time that that Appropriations Committee stuff is real. I mean, the extent to which this is really true of Alaska too. Whenever I talk to voters in Alaska around Murkowski, they can just tell you everything that she has done for the native community, for the fishermen community. Like, they know where she's got brought money. And even when they're kind of like blah on her, they're like, yeah, but she. She gets us this stuff. And they know it. So I guess Susan Collins. Do people have a genuine fear of losing sort of the, the gravy train of Susan Collins because she's a swing vote in the Senate. And so even right now, Murkowski is leveraging. I'm not even sure if it's on the SAVE act or Blanch or something, but, you know, money starts pouring into Alaska because you got to get Murkowski on board to get it done. Are people really hyper aware of that there and reluctant to shut that off?
- [44:22]
Alex Seitzwald
I think they're generally aware. I don't know if they, you know, they follow the machinations of it. But it came up even in the Democratic primary when Janet Mills said she was only going to serve one term. Platner was hitting her for saying, well, that's, you're never going to accrue seniority and bring money back to the state the way Susan Collins said, I will. You know, that was the progressive message. And that did resonate with folks. You know, these small towns, we have direct democracy. You have to turn out every year to approve your taxes. People really care about their taxes. They pay attention and they realize that a new fire truck or a new bridge or whatever is going to be a huge expense for a town with a, you know, a tiny budget. And so when this money falls out of the sky, they absolutely take notice of that. And that's all of her ads are about the money that she brings back, highlighting this project or that project. And Democrats don't really have a counter to that. Instead, it kind of comes down to, yes, maybe she's good for Maine, but think about what she means for the country as a whole. And, you know, it's great that she's bringing that money back, but control of the Senate means Trump has free rein. He can support more Supreme Court justices to roll back things you don't like. So it's, you kind of have to ask voters to hold two things in their minds at once. And I heard a lot of criticism of the late stage Platner campaign for going after her personally about her stock trades and her husband. And I think that wasn't really resonating when you have to kind of accept that what she has done is real, but still make the case why you should vote against her.
- [46:04]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. And I mean, is she cross pressured right now just thinking about the national environment? She's having to answer for funding ICE after ICE's shooting of Guerrero last week. And also on the ICE thing, there was, you know, she told, called Mark Wayne Mullen and was like, pause this. So he paused it and then Trump like reversed that pause immediately on the Blanche nomination. She's going to be a key consideration there. Does she get cross pressured in moments like this? In a big way, when some of these national issues kind of focus on Maine?
- [46:36]
Alex Seitzwald
Constantly. She's constantly cross pressured. And that is where Susan Collins lives. And it's, it's crazy to me that she has walked this tightrope as long as she has. It seems like, okay, there's, there's no way that anybody can survive this because the, her party has moved further and further away from her at the same time that the Democratic Party has moved further to the left and dislikes her more. The guy that Republicans nominated for governor is a, you know, totally Trumpy MAGA far right guy who's going to get crushed, but that's who they chose and he looks nothing like Susan Collins. So she needs those voters to turn out for her. She can't alienate, you know, the MAGA base too much because that's, that's how she needs them to win. But at the same time, she needs to not be scary to independent voters. But if there's anybody who can do that, I mean, it seems impossible to me, but if there's, anybody can do that, it's Susan Collins because she has done it for years and years. And she's, every time it seems like, oh, she's finally a better match or the Kavanaugh vote, how is she going to wiggle her way out of this one? She, she figures out another way, too. Maybe her luck has run out. It has to at some point. But I wouldn't bet against Susan Collins if I were putting money on this, which I never will.
- [47:55]
Sarah Longwell
But what about the ICE thing? Like right now? How is it impacting? Do people on the ground, Are they. Because actually the Bulwark has paid a lot of attention to the more recent ICE shootings, but it has not really broken through the way Alex Preddy and Renee Goode did. I think in part because these were, I don't know, these, these are brown people. Those were white people who are American citizens. The people that were shot were not citizens. So I guess that's part of it. The other thing, I do think it has a lot to do with the fact that that was caught on tape. Like the shootings in both those cases were caught on tape and people were in the streets about it in a, in a way that has not happened in these other cases. I'm not seeing a lot of images come out about what's happening in Maine, but what is happening on the ground because of it.
- [48:42]
Alex Seitzwald
I do think that it's a big deal, and it's exactly what Susan Collins does not need and does not want to be talking about. There was a crackdown in January in Maine around the same time as the Minnesota one, and Collins quite publicly squashed that. I mean, basically said to the White House, you know, call this off. You're screwing up my reelection campaign. And they did. And then she seemed to have purchase again when she called on Mark Lane Mullen and vehicular stops, and he complied. But then Trump overruled her. So she doesn't want to talk about ice. She doesn't want to talk about Trump. She doesn't want to talk about national politics at all. She wants to talk about Maine and what she has done. And anytime she's forced to talk about this stuff, it really hurts her. And I do think the overall tide has shifted against ICE here. The Republican gubernatorial nominee, who I mentioned when that earlier ICE crackdown, he was doing videos saying, welcome, ice. We're so excited to have you here. You know, come get the Somalis in Lewiston. Basically, the conservative media outlet, the main wire was, was doing embeds with ICE people. They're really celebrating it. And that tone is totally shifted. There's this little town, friendship, right in my neck of the woods. It's, if not the reddest town on the main coast, it's one of the reddest towns because the coast is generally pretty liberal fishing community. The only store in town had recently been bought by an Indian immigrant. And he was arrested by ICE a few weeks ago. And there's this huge outpouring of support. Petitions got circulated at the town office. The chair of the select board is named Bubba, and he led the effort to get these petitions going to get him released. And they're saying he's a vital part of our community. He's part of the fabric of our town. And so when a town like Friendship is, you know, rallying against an ICE arrest, and when a killing of ICE is. Is genuinely rattling people, I think that's just another really tough thing for. For Collins.
- [50:45]
Sarah Longwell
Well, you know, that's a heartwarming story about Bubba. Sometimes people get frustrated because they're like, didn't these people know what they was going to happen when they did this? This was the kind of thing that it meant to deport, you know, millions and millions of immigrants. But. But it still is always nice when somebody like Bubba shows up and says, that's enough.
- [51:02]
Alex Seitzwald
And by the way, Bubba is the new chair of the Select Board, who replaced the former chair of the select board, who was also named Bubba.
- [51:08]
Focus Group Participant 2
Great.
- [51:09]
Sarah Longwell
All right, well, Alex Seitzwald, thank you so much for joining us. Everybody. Go check out the midcoast villager@midcoastvillager.com and if you're ever in Camden, Maine, you should swing by. You guys have a cafe that goes with it. This is my dream. Okay? You wanted to save a local newspaper. I would like to save movie theaters. And I want that to be like a movie theater, bookstore, coffee shop. Like, I'm obsessed with this idea. Maybe I'll move to Maine too, with you. But you, the fact that you've done this, I love it. And I love that you seem so happy and fulfilled by all of it. It's a lovely thing. I think that the decimation of local media is one of the reasons why both national politics and national political watchers are much less informed about how things are received, really at the local level. I think it's enabling polarization. I think it's nationalizing our politics in a way that's really toxic. And so I just wanna say good on you, man. Way to go. This is awesome what you're doing.
- [52:08]
Alex Seitzwald
Thanks so much, Sarah. And I really appreciate the chance to preach the gospel of local news. Cause I absolutely do believe it.
- [52:14]
Sarah Longwell
All right, thanks, everyone. Again. No show tomorrow. We'll be back on Monday. But go subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, become a Bulwark plus member at the bot bulwark.com so you can chop it up in the comments. Because I'll tell you what, we do not read the comments unless you are a bull work subscriber. So if you're just shouting at us on YouTube and you're not subscribing, we don't read it. See you guys next week. I want to go to. The Borg Podcast is brought to you
- [52:57]
Alex Seitzwald
thanks to the work of lead producer
- [52:59]
Sarah Longwell
Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz and
- [53:04]
Alex Seitzwald
audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.