A few months ago, it seemed the US Senate race in Maine was all set. Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, would be the heavy favorite in her race against Republican Susan Collins, finishing her fifth term in the Senate. But on April 30, Mills ended her campaign as it was clear that political newcomer Graham Platner would easily win the June 9 Democratic primary.

Platner, as the New York Times has called him, is a Rorschach Test. People see what they want to see in him. Democrats want to win, so they don't see the guy who has an SS tattoo, and who has made statements like "I got older and became a communist," along with other inflammatory posts on Reddit that he now has deleted. Instead, they insist that repeating his own words constitutes a "smear." Declared the socialist publication Jacobin:

"Opponents went all in on smearing Graham Platner as a Nazi based on a bad tattoo choice. It didn't work. Maine voters decided they'd rather have universal health care and an end to reckless wars than a polished politician with an unblemished past."

While Platner has not openly called himself a socialist (although earlier in now-deleted social media, claimed to be a communist), he nonetheless has earned the hearty endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Jacobin, and Frank Bruni of the NYT. It is almost certain, come November, Maine voters will send Platner to the Senate, given the political conditions, even as he runs on a platform that echoes the current demands of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party.

There is no doubt that socialists are doing very well in the current electoral climate. Zohran Mamdani's recent victory in the New York City mayoral election has electrified the socialist movement across the country, which also includes the election of Katie Wilson as mayor of Seattle. Says Jacobin:

"Zohran Mamdani's mayoral win in New York forced many political observers to think, for the first time, of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as a serious and potentially formidable force in American political life.

For the more than one hundred DSA members who assembled in New Orleans for the second How We Win national conference last weekend, that fact has long been clear. First organized in 2023 by the DSA Fund, Jacobin, and The Nation, the event has become a key gathering of socialist elected officials, legislative staffers, and organizers that showcases the breadth and depth of DSA's growing political heft."