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'Which Side Are You On?' Platner Releases First Ad in General Election Against Collins
In the ad, Graham Platner describes GOP Sen. Susan Collins as “the epitome of the establishment politician” who “serves the donors and herself."
May 01, 2026
Graham Platner, the upstart candidate who is now the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for a crucial US Senate seat in Maine, put incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on the spot in his first general election campaign ad released Friday.
The video features Platner, who became the presumptive nominee after top rival Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign on Thursday, talking at a campaign rally in which he describes Collins as "the epitome of the establishment politician" who "serves the donors and herself" more than the people who elected her.
Susan Collins is on the side of the billionaire class.
I’m on the side of the rest of us who built this country. pic.twitter.com/ouKtXhgHji
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) May 1, 2026
Platner goes on to describe Collins as "duplicitous" and "willing to say one thing and do another," while chyrons flash on the screen highlighting Collins' crucial vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who helped end the constitutional right to abortion case healthcare by joining the court's majority to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
As Platner speaks, voices can be heard in the background singing the union anthem "Which Side Are You On?"
At the end of the ad, a chyron appears on the screen that reads, "Susan Collins: Not on our side."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was the first US senator to endorse Platner's campaign last year, sent out a letter of support for the Maine Democrat on Friday, arguing that his victory over the establishment-backed Mills in the primary is evidence that "status quo politics is not good enough" in the face of President Donald Trump's authoritarian power grabs.
"We need to elect candidates all over this country who have the guts not only to stand up to Trumpism," Sanders wrote, "but to take on the monied interests of both parties and fight for a working class that has been ignored for far too long. Graham Platner is one of those candidates."
Sanders cautioned that no one should take a Platner victory over Collins for granted, warning that the coming contest "will be one of the closest and most expensive races in the country."
Semafor on Thursday reported that Republicans were planning a massive advertising blitz against Platner, whom polls suggest would defeat Collins if the election were held today.
Semafor noted that the Senate GOP's main super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, has already reserved $42 million in fall ads, while a "sister nonprofit group, One Nation, is running a suite of ads now totaling $18 million."
"I can just tell you that we should have an all-out assault on the concept that somehow, some way, Graham Platner will squeak through," Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told Semafor. "He has to be exposed."
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Bernie Sanders Leads Senators in Demand to End Super PACs in Democratic Primaries
“We cannot allow unlimited outside spending to distort our elections or drown out the voices of working people."
Apr 27, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading a coalition of Democratic senators pushing for the party's leaders to require candidates to swear off billionaire- and corporate-backed super PACs, or political action committees, in this year's primary elections.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) joined the independent senator from Vermont to send a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin on Sunday.
Five of the senators are members of a group of Senate Democrats known as the "Fight Club" that has formed to oppose Schumer's preferred candidates in contested Democratic primaries, many of whom are closely aligned with the party's traditional corporate backers.
While the senators applauded the DNC's resolution last month broadly condemning the influence of dark money in party elections, calling it an "important first step," they said Democratic leaders needed to take more "concrete steps to curb the influence of dark money," particularly the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency industries and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
"Corporate-funded super PACs are shaping the 2026 elections as we speak, and the scale of their resources is unprecedented," the senators said. "Crypto-aligned groups are preparing to spend $200 million, and AIPAC-affiliated groups already control more than $90 million. The AI industry has already spent over $185 million this year alone. These sums are being deployed to influence Democratic primaries and overwhelm candidates who rely on grassroots support."
April's broad anti-dark money resolution was passed by the DNC in lieu of one that directly singled out “the growing influence” of AIPAC, specifically over its more than $100 million spending blitz in 2024 to oust progressive candidates. Despite a dramatic shift toward opposition to Israel among Democratic voters over the past three years, that resolution was voted down by a DNC panel.
AIPAC continues to dump massive amounts of money behind its preferred candidates. The senators' letter notes that "in Illinois alone, outside groups spent over $50 million in recent Democratic primaries." Nearly half of that money was spent by AIPAC, which secretly funneled money to support its candidates using shell groups that appeared to be unaffiliated.
The group has used similar tactics in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Ala Stanford, a candidate for Pennsylvania's 3rd District in Philadelphia, was recently revealed to have received $500,000 worth of backing from AIPAC through a super PAC despite claiming to have received no support from the Israel lobby.
Meanwhile, in Maine, a clique of Republican billionaires who back Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)—including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Palantir CEO Alex Karp—also recently dropped $2 million to fund an ad campaign seeking to hamper the chances of the Democratic Senate primary front-runner Graham Platner.
"We cannot allow unlimited outside spending to distort our elections or drown out the voices of working people," the senators said in Sunday's letter.
The senators noted Schumer's past statement that overturning the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the door for the flood of corporate money into elections by allowing individuals to independently spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates, was "probably more important than any other single thing we could do to preserve this great and grand democracy.”
They said that while reversing the ruling remained a "critical long-term goal," the party "has the authority—and the responsibility—to act now with clear, enforceable rules."
"National and state parties should require all Democratic candidates to sign a pledge opposing billionaire- and corporate-backed super PAC spending on their behalf in Democratic primaries," they said. "The DNC, state parties, and committees working to elect Democrats to the House and Senate have many potential tools at their disposal to enforce that pledge, including withholding endorsements for those who make endorsements in the primary, and they should use whatever tools necessary to do so."
Sanders has said that simply requiring candidates to take a pledge is not enough and that party leaders need to be diligent about holding them to it.
“If the Democrats are going to be honest and consistent in terms of their concerns about money and politics, they’ve got to clean up, in my view, their own house immediately,” he said in an interview on Saturday. “That means getting super PACs out of Democratic primaries, congressional as well as presidential.”
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'Unprecedented Kleptocracy': Sanders Slams Trump Family's Presidential Profiteering
"The Trump family has made $4 billion off the presidency," the senator said.
Apr 24, 2026
Amid renewed scrutiny of self-dealing by President Donald Trump and his relatives ahead of this weekend's Mar-a-Lago gala for top investors in the $TRUMP meme coin—whose value has plummeted more than 90% from its high—Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday took aim at the First Family's corruption.
"The Trump family has made $4 billion off the presidency," Sanders (I-Vt.) said on X following reporting by New Yorker staff writer David Kirkpatrick and others detailing how Trump and relatives have profited from his position during his second term.
Sanders listed sources of Trump family presidential profiteering, including more than $3 billion from cryptocurrencies like $TRUMP and $MELANIA—the latter whose value has plunged by over 99%—Persian Gulf deals worth over $425 million, $150 million in the form of a luxury jumbo jet gifted by Qatar, and various business ventures and deals the senator slammed as part of an "unprecedented kleptocracy."
In addition to the two meme coins, many of those crypto gains are linked to ventures including American Bitcoin and World Liberty Financial—which has raised eyebrows for being co-founded by Trump’s sons, with disclosures showing 75% of its token sales going to a Trump-linked entity.
Democrats on the US House Oversight Committee have published their own running tally showing nearly $2.5 billion in "Trump family digital grift profits"—including more than $634 million from foreign sources—and $6 billion in "Trump family digital grift wealth."
"While Americans struggle to buy groceries and pay rent, Donald Trump is making his family richer through digital grift schemes—collecting profits through digital wallets and granting pardons to the highest bidders," the House Oversight Democrats said.
Sanders isn't the only US lawmaker to denounce what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last year called Trump's "superhighway of crypto corruption."
Also last year, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a report detailing how "Trump and his family have transformed the presidency into a personal money-making operation, adding billions of dollars to his net worth through cryptocurrency schemes entangled with foreign governments, corporate allies, and criminal actors."
"President Trump and his family kept lining their pockets while he and his allies in Congress closed down the federal government—refusing to extend tax credits to make healthcare affordable for American families, putting continued food benefits for women and children in doubt, and placing active-duty military personnel in danger of missing their next paycheck," House Judiciary Democrats said.
Trump is the only president to ever be convicted of felony crimes. In 2024, while he was running for a second term, a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony charges related to the falsification of business records regarding hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 presidential election.
Last year, a New York appeals court tossed a $355 million civil fraud judgment—which increased to more than half a billion dollars with interest—against Trump and his two eldest sons in a separate case in which the trio exaggerated the wealth of their business organization. The ruling upheld the fraud finding and banned Trump and his sons from leading businesses in the state for 2-3 years.
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