Alice Knapp is a Maine attorney who was a founding board member of Maine AllCare and served as the first director of the legislatively created Consumer HealthCare Division within the Maine Bureau of Insurance.

Reporter Randy Billings’ recent article headlined “Senate candidate’s initial disclosure
offers few details about his personal finances” underscored my impression that
newspaper coverage of Graham Platner’s U.S. Senate candidacy slants against him.

Platner’s late-filed federal financial disclosure “shed little light on his personal finances,”
Billings writes. Only in the last column of the piece do we learn that Janet Mills hasn’t
filed her required federal disclosure, but she got an extension until February, making
Platner’s filing timelier from a strictly calendar standpoint.

Billings concedes that Mills’ April filed financial disclosure — apparently referencing an annual state report required of executive employees — “too lacks details.” One wonders why the editors didn’t go with the more accurate article headline “Senate candidates’ disclosures offer few details about their personal finances.”

Piling on Platner, the article states that critics have questioned U.S. Marine veteran and
current oyster farmer Platner’s working class bona fides. Those critics have cast Platner as a “man of privilege” due to his distinguished architect/interior designer grandfather, his father’s background as “a former assistant district attorney and author who once ran for state Senate” and his “well-known businesswoman” mother, “who has been active in
Democratic politics.”

No mention is made of Mills’ arguably more privileged background, so why the focus on Platner? While the reporter and/or his editors apparently think such details irrelevant, I disagree. The omission of relevant facts can be just as misleading as untruths.

For the record, Mills’ grandfather served six terms in the Maine Legislature as a member of both the House and Senate and her father served in the Maine Senate. Prior to that, her father spent many years as a federal U.S. attorney for the District of Maine, a much higher level position than that of assistant district attorney and an appointment no doubt facilitated by his political connections.

As for Platner’s father being an “author,” his three novels appear to have been self-published. I admire Mills’ many impressive accomplishments, her record on promoting renewable energy and her vigorous defense of women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. I was, however, appalled by her 2024 veto of legislation passed by the Maine Legislature to ban bump stocks and other rapid-fire devices after the Lewiston mass shooting in 2023 and her opposition to the red flag law that recently passed by citizen referendum.

Also appalling is her record of vetoing legislative initiatives to permit farm worker collective bargaining (2022), to remove the exclusion of farm workers from Maine’s minimum wage laws (2024) and to grant farm workers protection from retaliation for discussing conditions of employment (2025).

Platner, whose candidacy I support, has held more than 30 overflow town halls across
the state and his message is clear and compelling. It’s hard to argue with his reasoned
conclusion that solving many of this nation’s most pressing problems requires reversing
the income inequality that has returned to pre-Depression Gilded Age levels over the
past several decades. One analysis suggests that nearly $80 trillion in wealth has
been effectively redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1% since 1975.

That the federal minimum wage remains a disgraceful $7.25 is the result of a money-driven political system that has concentrated power at the top to the detriment of the rest of us.

Platner’s U.S. Senate race website comprehensively lays out his platform. Mills’ campaign website provides no information on her platform and simply asks for donations.

I called into a recent public radio “Maine Calling” program and challenged the
participating reporters to explain which of Platner’s “left-wing, progressive” positions
moderate Democrats take issue with, noting that Platner favors universal health care.

While universal health care has been in the Maine Democratic Party’s platform since
2016, I have yet to see party leadership, Mills included, endorse the idea. I
did not receive an answer.