The Astonishing Battle for the Senate In Maine

This fund-raising email from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren showed up in my in-box a few days ago…

“I want to tell you about the moment I knew Graham Platner was my kind of fighter. When someone asked him: When did you first realize the system is rigged?

“Without hesitation, he pointed to the 2008 crash — a time when millions of families lost their homes, their jobs, their pensions, and their savings. People were cheated. People were lied to. People were trapped.

“And Graham's answer? "When none of the bankers went to jail."

“We need more leaders like Graham in Congress — ones who will call out what’s wrong with our system, stand up to powerful interests, and fight to unrig the economy for working people.”

The Rise of an Unlikely Political Challenger

Graham Platner is a Maine oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran, a Democrat trying to unseat long-entrenched Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins. But first he needed to defeat Maine’s current governor Janet Mills in the Democratic Party primary June 9.

On the face of it, Platner’s task would seem formidable. No previous political experience. No prior statewide name recognition. No source of personal wealth. Running against both an incumbent governor and a senator who has held the office for 30 years.

Also daunting: Platner’s controversial past statements about women and rape, a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol, and other things from his past that would seem to be disqualifying for voters. Oh, and at least $12 million in dark money from unnamed rich donors already has bought saturation media attacking him.

Despite all of that, according to the latest polls Platner leads Governor Mills by an astonishing 35 points in the primary. He leads Collins by about 7 points in the match up for the November general election.

Today, Platner overcame his first hurdle. Governor Mills suspended her campaign, citing lack of money to continue. Unmentioned, the lack of sufficient support which campaign money generally follows.

If the political world was shocked by the election of Zorhan Mandani as mayor of New York, Platner’s early political knock out of Maine’s incumbent governor is Mandani on steroids. Maine’s voting history is no where near as liberal as New York City’s. What’s going on here?

Why No One Went to Jail After the 2008 Crash

Elizabeth Warren’s email likely nails it: not just that some bankers should have been jailed for the millions of lives they ruined (Iceland sent 9 bankers to jail for their role in the 2008 financial collapse) but also executives in other industries whose actions resulted in unnecessary hardship.

Why didn’t bankers go to jail? At the time the Obama Justice Department claimed there was not enough evidence to make the case. But there’s lots of evidence they didn’t try very hard. This report from NPR’s Marketplace program is damning.

And it’s not just banking.

A few months ago, UCLA released results of a massive study proving that tobacco company executives knew as long ago as the 1960s that their products were harmful to health. They  hid the results, which in itself should have been a criminal offense. Even worse, they ran expensive campaigns lying about it.

The same has been true of the oil industry. For decades the industry has lobbied Congress with misleading data about the effects of auto emissions on health and climate. Lie-baby-lie. Read damning evidence published in the Guardian.

Why Isn’t Anyone Held Accountable?

For the executives who made these decisions there’s been little personal accountability. 

And this is not just history. The Supreme Court heard arguments this week by Bayer trying to avoid more financial responsibility for the damaging health effects of the weed killer RoundUp, a product that has resulted in an astonishing 200,000 suits. Bayer already has paid billions in fines and compensation, but why is money the only remedy for killing and sickening people?

People go to jail for shop lifting, for floating bad checks, for vandalism. Why not for killing and economically destroying lives of innocent people through banking, and other commercial fraud? Corporations don’t make decisions to defraud people and put people unknowingly at risk. Humans do.

If the law makes it too hard to demand accountability, the law can be changed. But only if the people we elect choose to do it.

Perhaps in this year’s Maine Senate election we’re seeing where the public’s distrust in its institutions finally leads. To an oyster farming Marine veteran who has had enough. And a state whose voters have decided they have, too.

Comments? Criticism? Contact Joe Rothstein at jrothstein@rothstein.net

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