A former U.S. Marine and oyster farmer from Hancock County announced Tuesday he is challenging U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, adding his name to a growing list of candidates in the 2026 race.

Graham Platner, a Democrat, served three deployments to Iraq with the U.S. Marine Corps and also was deployed to Afghanistan with the Army National Guard before settling in his hometown of Sullivan.

Platner, 40, said he’s running for the Senate because while he’s been supported by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, he recognizes that others don’t have that benefit.

“I look around in my community and I see, essentially, things falling apart,” Platner said. “The health care system in rural Maine is collapsing. Nobody can afford a house, if you’re lucky even to find one. Wages have not kept up with inflation.”

Platner is among nearly a dozen candidates who have either filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission or announced plans to challenge Collins next year, though none are well known. Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat nearing the end of her second term, has faced pressure from national Democrats to challenge Collins but has not made an announcement.

Collins, 72, would be seeking a sixth term and has said she intends to run for reelection.

She is expected to face a tough election cycle as she navigates tricky political waters with Donald Trump in the White House. Collins has not supported any of Trump’s three campaigns for president, most recently writing in former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for president last fall.

But she’s also navigated this dynamic before, having warded off a challenge from former Maine Speaker of the House Sara Gideon in 2020 — an expensive campaign in which Democrats were riding a wave of resistance to Trump and outrage over Collins’ pivotal vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kavanaugh’s confirmation helped remake the court’s conservative majority and end federal abortion protections under Roe v. Wade.

Platner grew up in Ellsworth and Sullivan and now runs an oyster farm on Frenchman Bay. He also serves as harbormaster and planning board chair (an appointed position) in Sullivan.

While he has never held elected office before, Platner said it’s time for a change in who represents Maine in the Senate.

“I’m beginning to feel like it’s really time that we send up people from the working class who understand the daily struggles and needs of people,” he said.

Platner said his priorities include improving access to health care (he supports universal health care) and home ownership.

“I think we can do much of this by ending the stupid foreign wars I’ve fought in, in which we spent trillions of dollars that did nothing for the American taxpayer, and we also do it by getting money back from the billionaire class that stole it from us in the first place,” he said.

Other candidates seeking to unseat Collins include Phillip Rench, a former senior engineer for Elon Musk’s SpaceX who lives in Waterboro and is running as an independent; David Costello, a Brunswick Democrat who ran unsuccessfully last year against Sen. Angus King; and Jordan Wood, a Bristol Democrat who served as chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., and founded the pro-democracy organization democracyFIRST.

Republicans Carmen Calabrese and Daniel Smeriglio and Democrats Tucker Favreau, Andrea Laflamme, Daira Rodriguez and Natasha Alcala have also filed federal campaign finance paperwork for the race.