“I laugh at the fact that a lot of people in this political system who come from an incredible amount of privilege and wealth are the first to say, ‘Are you? truly Working class? “You don’t make a lot of money and you work on the periphery, but your father was a small-town lawyer,” Blatner told Lulu Garcia Navarro, host of the Times podcast The Interview. “Does that mean you can’t actually represent workers?”
As the Times reported on Friday, Platner is “the Dartmouth College-educated son of a lawyer, the grandson of a famous Connecticut architect, and a graduate of a private high school,” and whose mother owns an “upscale restaurant.” His family and in-laws contributed financial assistance when Plattner and his wife bought their home and when they pursued in vitro fertilization in Norway, after finding the treatment unaffordable under the for-profit health care system in the United States.
Blatner, a first-time political candidate and Marine Corps veteran, owns an oyster farm, and according to his financial disclosure forms, the Times reported: “The bulk of his income appears to come from the nearly $60,000 in tax-free disability benefits he qualifies for each year after serving four combat tours.”
The Times noted that both Republicans and Democrats who supported Blatner’s primary opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, attacked him for his background and suggested he was wealthier than he let on.
One of Mills’ supporters, former Maine Democratic Party chairman and corporate lobbyist Tony Buxton, was quoted as saying: “This is not a salt-of-the-earth man who comes from a hard-fought existence.” Buxton with firm Pretty Flaherty, representing a company aiming to build a data center in Maine; Plattner supports A national endowment for artificial intelligence data centers.
Contrary to Buxton’s statements, and according to financial disclosures, Platner would be the fifth least wealthy member of the US Senate if he is elected in November. He and his wife have a net worth of less than $100,000.
Ryan Grimm, co-founder of Drop Site News, question Whether the Times would send “three reporters to report on what kind of life Suzanne Collins has led versus Graham Platner over the past 20 years.”
“Count the private jets, the amazing restaurants, and the millions in accumulated wealth, then put them next to each other and compare them,” he suggested. “It will be balanced.”
according to According to Collins’ financial disclosures, the five-term Republican senator’s current net worth is $9.6 million, with as much as $1.8 million directly in the bank last year. A spokesman for her told the Times that more than $342,000 of her wealth comes from interest and dividends from one of the Senate’s best-performing stock portfolios, a portfolio in her husband’s name.
Collins has bidder A ban on stock trading for members of Congress and their spouses.
The senator’s financial disclosures also show that the $4.8 million she holds in corporate stocks includes Amazon, UnitedHealth and Visa — a company that stands to directly benefit from Collins’ vote last week against protecting consumers from overdraft fees.
“You can make $25 million a year in this country, and you’re a lot closer to any of the billionaires.”
While the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) recently He confirmed The Democratic campaign told the Times that Blatner is a “distant rich kid” and that his Republican opponent is “very rich.”
“I don’t think you can come up with a better avatar for the long-enriching establishment politician than Suzanne Collins. Which raises a tremendous amount of money outside of Maine.” He told Garcia Navarro. “It takes an enormous amount of money [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. It gets a huge amount of money from special interest groups and fossil fuel companies, and it has a high-performing stock portfolio. I think a lot of people look at that in Maine and say, “I don’t think this is the politics I want to actually represent me.”
Despite the NRSC’s attack on Blattner as a “rich kid,” polling and data suggest that many of the 41-year-old candidate’s peers can relate to his personal financial background, with millennials a presence. Preparing reports In many Surveys Their lives are more financially precarious than their parents’ lives were at their age, due to high costs and debt.
“It’s much more difficult for young people today to save money for signs of the American dream than it was for previous generations,” says Joan Hsu, director of consumer surveys at the University of Michigan. He said CNBC last year.
According to The Times and his critics in the political establishment, books Maine-based writer Andy O’Brien said, “Graham is this privileged rich kid, but he needs help paying for health care and housing. How could that not be relatable?”
“I’ve been to a number of town halls in Platner, and one of the most common themes is older Maine residents talking about the lack of economic opportunities for their adult children and grandchildren,” O’Brien wrote. “Many of these young people are still living at home, even though they have jobs, because they cannot rent or buy a home in Maine. Many of them are struggling without affordable health care and child care to allow them to work. At a recent town hall in Appleton, a local teacher told Platner that she had been teaching for 30 years in the district and still had $100,000 in student loan debt that continued to accrue interest.”
Times reporters seemed surprised by Platner’s definition of “working class,” which the newspaper described as “an expansive interpretation.”
“My definition of working class these days is basically anyone who makes money from wages,” he told The Times. “If you work for a living and you go out and work hours and pay taxes like everyone else, I think that’s completely fair.”
He alluded to his dialogue with reporters in a conversation with The Lever’s David Sirota before the articles were published.
He noted that while his grandfather was a successful architect, the family’s financial prosperity did not continue through subsequent generations.
“My mother is still working because she doesn’t have money,” he said. “And we’re trying, quite frankly, to figure out that if she can’t sell her restaurant, she’s not going to have a retirement. My wife and I, we’re not broke, but there’s going to be no money at the end of the month.”
“You can make $25 million a year in this country,” he told Sirota. “You are much closer to someone living in poverty than any billionaire.” “And New York Times reporters were like, ‘Well, this is a really expanded view of the ‘working class.’ I’m like, ‘You know what else is expanded?’ Wealth inequality. Because we all have nothing, and there are two people who have almost everything.”
“You are working class if you make your money from work and wages,” he told Garcia Navarro. “The world of wealth inequality has become so acute that there are a lot of people sitting on a lot of money who are not working. They are making money from their investments. They are making money from their wealth.”
He added: “I know it’s an expansive definition of ‘working class,’ but I think you need an expansive definition when we have the greatest margin of wealth inequality in the history of the country.”
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