In the wake of a top-level staffing exodus in recent weeks, U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner (D) is doubling down on his progressive bona fides by hiring the deputy director of the Maine Peoples’ Alliance (MPA) to take the helm of his campaign.
Ben Chin, 40, will serve as Platner’s campaign manager in a move his supporters hope will bring stability to the Senate bid. To date, the campaign’s political director, finance director, and campaign manager have quit for various reasons. Genevieve McDonald, the former political director, has been the most outspoken of these, citing a clash of values following revelations about Platner’s tattoo resembling a Nazi image.
A one-time candidate for Mayor of Lewiston, Chin has spent the decade since that unsuccessful effort community organizing and championing progressive causes such as expanding Medicaid, raising the minimum wage, creating a paid medical and family leave benefit at the state level, publishing Maine’s first racial justice policy guide and a white paper arguing that white feminists are to blame for mass incarceration.
During his 2015 campaign in Lewiston, the issue of race came to the fore during the run-off when Chin’s opponents compared him to Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese rebel leader and Harvard graduate. Another scandal plagued his campaign when one of his staffers had an affair with his opponent and allegedly supplied him with internal emails, a charge which led to the resignation of Shane Bouchard three years later.
When testifying before the Maine Legislature in support of tribal sovereignty for the Wabanaki people in 2022, Chin said something intriguing for a progressive: “If we want the best, most creative ideas to solve our toughest problems, it’s time for the state to get out of the way.”
Given his record of advocacy and writing, it is unlikely he applies that remarkably clear-eyed thinking to questions of governance beyond tribal affairs. The agenda of the Maine Peoples’ Alliance hews more closely to the ideology of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani who, following his victory last week, crowed “there is no problem too high for government to solve.”
Maine political columnist and resident curmudgeon Al Diamon recently described the MPA as a litmus test for where people stand on the state’s current spectrum:
“If a legislator supports all the MPA’s positions, that person is a left-wing extremist,” Diamon wrote, adding “If a senator or representative consistently opposes the MPA, they’re a right-wing fanatic. Simple. Easy to understand. Nearly impossible to misconstrue.”
In other words, in selecting Chin to run his campaign, Platner has chosen a brand of ideological rigidity that Maine voters have rejected from the time they elected the country’s first independent governor to the more recent trend of their sending centrists like Bill Cohen, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to the U.S. Senate. Insodoing, he appears to be banking on a wave of radical change.
Also, aside from his own failed bid for Lewiston mayor ten years ago and grassroots mobilizing in support of the MPA agenda, Chin has no statewide political campaign management experience so he, like Platner, is embarking on unchartered territory in this someone mundane, tactical tedium of winning elections.
But as Mamdani showed in Manhattan, today may be a unique moment where vibes and zeal matter more than experience. Regardless, Chin still faces the challenge of doing what is expected of a good campaign manager: making the trains run on time and herding cats. If he shows aptitude here, he will exceed expectations.
