Graham Platner, Maine Senate hopeful, takes his campaign to Helldivers 2

WASHINGTON (CN) — As he sparked up his flamethrower and torched a nest of screeching alien bugs, Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner made his case for expanding Americans’ access to public transportation.

“It’s a failure of imagination,” the Democratic Senate hopeful lamented as he called in an orbital napalm strike on a horde of approaching aliens.

Platner on Monday became the latest political figure to tap video games and streamers in an effort to build his political brand, hopping into the bug-stomping multiplayer shooter Helldivers 2 with a pair of Twitch streamers to talk politics and his candidacy for a Senate seat that is a crucial contest for Democrats in the forthcoming midterm elections.

But unlike some other politicos who have picked up a controller in recent months, the 41-year-old oyster farmer and military veteran is well-versed in the gaming arts — just one dimension of his candidacy in which he hopes to buck politics as usual.

“There are people who have been in the system for a long time … they just cannot imagine how we could do this differently,” Platner told Twitch streamers Mychal Jefferson, known as Trihex; and Jackson Bliton, also known as Bajheera, during an hourslong stream Monday night. “The more I interact with it, the more I realize nobody actually knows what’s going on.”

Political figures, including several prominent Democrats, have turned to gaming in recent months as a method to reach younger audiences. California Governor Gavin Newsom made waves last month when he joined popular streamer ConnorEatsPants for his semi-regular “Fortnite Friday” series and talked serious policy issues while playing the eponymous battle royale shooter — albeit poorly.

As Platner prepared his Starship Troopers-inspired soldier to drop into battle Monday night, he didn’t shy away from discussions about policy. But the Maine Senate candidate, a progressive and staunch critic of establishment Democratic politics, was also eager to make his case for bringing a new perspective to Washington.

“Everybody talks about how there’s this wave going on of people re-engaging with politics, but yeah, of course they are — look at the world we’re living in,” he said. “I’ve had this surreal thing happen these past couple of months, where I just say what I’ve believed for a long time, and a lot of folks are just like, ‘yeah, that seems really good.’”

And Platner critiqued the way the establishment Democratic party has engaged with voters, lumping his would-be colleagues’ brand of politics in with the kind that he said Americans were “sick and tired” of.

“Everything’s been run through a focus group seven times," he said. “It always feels so fake.”

Authenticity appeared to be a central theme for Platner, who at one point during the stream recounted a conversation with a reporter who asked him how his campaign had managed to develop and “authentic sounding” message. “It feels like at this point you answer a question with your opinion and people in the media are like, ‘okay, but what’s the angle?’” he said.

Platner is facing a difficult Democratic primary against former Maine Governor Janet Mills. It’s a contest that was made potentially more arduous in the fall, after old Reddit posts emerged in which the candidate called himself a communist, denigrated police and referred to rural white Americans as “racist and stupid.”

He has since said that some of those posts no longer reflect his current political beliefs.

The Senate hopeful faced another controversy in October, after reports emerged that he had gotten a tattoo while serving as a U.S. Marine, which resembled a symbol associated with the Nazi SS. Platner said that he did not know what the symbol represented at the time and has since gotten the tattoo covered up. But the episode spurred some to question whether he should remain in the race.

During Monday’s stream, Platner did not directly address either of those scandals, but he did appear to nod to some press coverage of his campaign, taking aim at the “pundit, chattering class of D.C.” and comparing it with his home community in Maine, which he framed as more forgiving.

“Every now and again, I have to interact with this other thing that takes itself so seriously and is seemingly so important, because it’s newspaper headlines and TV shows and news outlets, all of that stuff,” said Platner. “But then I walk out of my house, and I talk to my neighbor … and my neighbor still respects me and likes me because we’re friends. And I’m like, oh, yeah, none of that other stuff is real.”

As he and the duo of Twitch streamers traversed an alien landscape, blasting alien bugs and rushing to their extraction shuttle, the conversation oscillated across policy issues — public transit, health care, and broadband internet access.

But Platner also offered his thoughts on building stronger communities outside the traditional boundaries of politics.

“Politics is about power, and power is about people being organized and being able to work together,” said the Senate candidate. “That doesn’t always come from what we think of as politics — that comes from community.”

Maine’s Senate election is a key race for Democrats as they look to take back the upper chamber after the 2026 midterm elections. And it’s still unclear whether Platner would have the necessary support to unseat the incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins.

In a poll published last week by Democratic political group EMILYs List, Platner trailed Collins by double digits when respondents were read quotes from his previous Reddit posts. But a separate survey predicted that Platner could beat both primary challenger Mills and Collins.

Another poll published Monday by Cygnal showed Collins trailing her potential Democratic challengers among Maine voters.

Follow @BenjaminSWeiss