Maine’s Only Billionaire Becomes Unspoken Target in Platner’s War on the ‘Oligarchy’

Maine has one billionaire.

Her name is Susan Alfond.

Alfond, a Scarborough resident and heiress to the Dexter Shoe fortune, is listed by Forbes as one of the richest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of roughly $3.5 billion. Her family’s fortune traces back to Harold Alfond, who built Dexter Shoe Co. into one of Maine’s best-known business success stories before the company was sold to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

But in Maine’s increasingly nationalized U.S. Senate race, the state’s lone billionaire has become part of a much larger political target.

Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner has built his campaign around an aggressive attack on what he calls the “billionaire class,” “oligarchs,” and a political system he says is owned by the wealthy.

Platner’s campaign website says he is running to defeat U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, “defeat her billionaire backers,” and “win back the seat for the working Mainers being priced out of our homes.” Elsewhere on the site, Platner claims Maine is becoming unaffordable because America has “a government by, of, and for billionaires,” building what he calls a “billionaire economy” that ordinary Mainers cannot afford.

“I’m not just running against Susan Collins,” Platner’s campaign says. “I’m running against the billionaire class that owns her and owns Washington.”

That rhetoric has become central to Platner’s message.

At the Maine Democratic Convention in Portland, Platner accused political leaders in both parties of answering to “corporations and billionaires” and declared that Democrats were “taking back our democracy from the oligarchs.”

The message is clear: Platner is not merely running against Collins. He is running against wealth itself as a political force.

What is less clear is whether Platner has any specific issue with Alfond personally.

There is no clear public evidence that Platner has singled out Susan Alfond by name. Alfond is better known in Maine for her family’s business legacy and philanthropy than for serving as a major public political figure. But Platner’s sweeping rhetoric leaves little room for distinction. When a candidate says he is running against the “billionaire class,” Maine’s only billionaire is, by definition, part of the class he is attacking.

That puts Alfond in an unusual position.

She is not a candidate. She is not on the ballot. Yet Platner’s campaign framing makes Maine’s wealthiest resident a symbol in his broader argument that billionaires have too much influence over politics, government, and the economy.

Platner’s supporters see that message as populist and overdue. They argue that working-class Mainers are being squeezed by housing costs, health care costs, inflation, and a political system too responsive to wealthy donors and large corporations.

His critics see something different: a campaign built on resentment, class warfare, and a broad-brush attack that treats personal wealth as suspicious, even when that wealth comes from a Maine business family that has given extensively to causes in the state.

It also ignores an obvious reality about the American economy.

Billionaires like Susan Alfond, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and others did not simply appear out of nowhere. Their companies, investments, and family enterprises have created jobs, opportunities, careers, innovation, and hope for millions of Americans. They have built businesses, funded new ideas, employed workers, supported communities, and generated the tax revenue that pays for many of the very programs politicians like Platner want expanded.

That is the part Platner never seems to explain.

The roads, schools, health care programs, social services, subsidies, grants, and government benefits he wants funded do not pay for themselves. They are funded, in large part, by taxpayers, employers, investors, businesses, and the economic growth created by the private sector. Demonizing the people and companies that help create that wealth may make for a good campaign slogan, but it is not a serious economic plan.

The political risk for Platner is that Maine voters tend to be skeptical of extremes. Many Mainers may share concerns about affordability and political money. But attacking “billionaires” in the abstract is easier than explaining why a Maine family fortune, built through business success and philanthropy, should be treated as an enemy.

That is the tension at the center of Platner’s campaign.

He says the enemy is the oligarchy. He says billionaires and the politicians they support have rigged the system. He says Collins is part of that system.

But in Maine, the billionaire class is not some faceless crowd. It has a name. It has a history. And it includes Susan Alfond, the only billionaire in the state Platner wants to represent.

Platner may believe billionaires are the problem. But Mainers may reasonably ask a different question: if the people who build companies, create jobs, fund careers, pay taxes, and support communities are the enemy, who exactly does Platner think is going to pay for the government he wants to grow?