Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner told reporters he “love[s] gays” while not appearing to know what the full acronym, LGBTQIA, stands for.
Platner told The Atlantic that another reporter had asked about his stance on “LGBTQIA+” issues — but when the outlet asked him a follow-up question about the meaning of the final two letters in the acronym, he simply replied, “That’s actually a good question.” The candidate later said he guessed the “I” stood for intersex and the “A” stood for androgynous, which his aide had to correct to “asexual.”
“It’s asexual, sorry. It’s asexual,” Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine veteran, then told the outlet.
When pressed by The Atlantic on what the “plus” at the end of the acronym stood for, the left-wing candidate replied, “Everything else.”
The outlet also noted that Platner at one unspecified point in the exchange said, “I do love gays.”
Platner, backed by Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has been dogged by controversy over the past several months, but remains ahead in a range of Democratic primary polls over his intraparty opponent, Gov. Janet Mills. The Sanders-endorsed candidate has come under fire for a tattoo — which he has since covered up — that resembled a Nazi symbol, as well as for unearthed Reddit posts that appeared to minimize sexual assault and encourage fighting “fascism” with “a good semi-automatic rifle.”
The candidate told The Atlantic he is making an effort to expand his campaign mission outside of the “material conditions that people are living in” to be inclusive of social issues.
Mills, 78, who has served as Maine’s governor since 2019, has declared the month of June as Pride Month in 2022 and was a part of the 2025 International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference.
Collins has also led bipartisan legislation in support of gay rights, spearheading the Respect for Marriage Act alongside Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2022 to ensure “all married couples, including same-sex and interracial couples are entitled to the rights and responsibilities of marriage, regardless of the state in which they live.”
Some recent polls of the state’s Democratic primary show Platner up by significant margins against Mills, while other polls showed the governor with a lead. Collins, who has served since 1997, has held her seat despite several Democratic attempts to oust her. She is currently the only Republican senator representing a state former Vice President Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential election.
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