Banner plane attacks Platner as Maine Senate primary heats up

A banner plane over Brunswick carried a blunt attack, “Platner Shames Maine,” and turned the sky above Sagadahoc County into the latest stage in the U.S. Senate fight. In a town where Brunswick Executive Airport and Brunswick Landing sit on the footprint of a former naval air station, the flyover was impossible to ignore, and it fit a race that is growing louder by the day.

The message landed in the middle of a fast-moving Democratic primary set to decide the party’s nominee on June 9, 2026. Gov. Janet Mills suspended her Senate campaign in April, narrowing the field to Graham Platner and Brunswick Democrat David Costello as the main contenders. Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and military veteran from Sullivan, has become the frontrunner, a shift that has made him a bigger target as the primary clock runs down.

That attention has not been flattering. Platner has faced scrutiny over old Reddit posts, a tattoo he has said he did not know carried Nazi connotations, and sexually explicit messages he sent to multiple women while married. Some Maine Democrats are still standing by him, but others have cooled as the disclosures have piled up, and national Democrats are privately worried the controversy could spill beyond Maine’s borders.

The stakes help explain the escalation. Maine is one of the Senate seats Democrats need to win if they want to regain control of the chamber, and recent polling has kept Platner competitive in a state where Susan Collins has long been a formidable Republican incumbent. A late-May University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll showed Platner ahead of Collins by 9 points, and a separate UNH poll put him 7 points ahead of Mills in the Democratic primary before she stepped back.

Platner’s own crowds have shown why opponents are trying to define him now. He drew more than 600 people to a town hall in Biddeford, and more than 500 to the first stop in his town-hall tour. He also campaigned in Brunswick before, holding a town hall on the Town Mall in October 2025, which gives the aerial attack a sharper local edge than a generic outside hit. In Bath, local discussion has also compared the city’s mayor favorably to Platner, a sign that the race is spilling into familiar Sagadahoc County political territory.

For Brunswick voters, the flyover was about more than a slogan. It was a sign that the contest has shifted from introductions to message control, and that the fight over Platner’s image is now being waged in public, over streets, neighborhoods and the visible landmarks that make this part of Maine feel close to home.