My style of journalism – interviews focused on concrete details of people’s lives – has its roots in the election reporting I did in newsrooms from 2005 to 2013. Covering elections meant keeping up with polls, getting fed innuendo and dirt from dueling campaign staffers, calling up political science professors to get just the right “expert quote” to articulate the stakes of the race, but my favorite part was away from all that. I liked popping into barbershops and diners (yes, I liked doing that, even though it’s a cliché), but I’d also stop at public basketball courts, shopping centers, and office parks, and convince people to give me a few moments of their time to talk.
The point was to hear from voters who weren’t showing up to rallies or watching cable news every night to hear how they thought things were going in their lives and to get a sense of which messages were trickling down about which candidates would do the most to help them.
Over time, I found I liked talking to people about their lives so much that I pitched a show about it – which became Death, Sex & Money – but I keep an eye on political news, particularly candidate profiles. I want to know who these people are who are making the case for voters’ support, what happened in their lives to shape their values, and which people's interests they know most intimately.
So - I’ve been following the Maine U.S. Senate race. Sen. Susan Collins is up for reelection to keep her Republican seat, and there’s a contested Democratic primary to take her on. The sitting governor, Janet Mills, is one candidate. The other is Graham Platner, a 41-year-old combat veteran from a small rural town who, until July, had never considered running for office. And he’s leading in primary polls.
Last week, on February 23, while Planter was traveling through the San Francisco Bay Area to raise money, I got to sit down and interview him.
He’s running as an economic populist, and as a veteran with PTSD who spent his post-combat years disillusioned with the American government and working through career false starts. Part of that time, he lived in Washington, DC, and bartended at a Capitol Hill bar called The Tune Inn:
Anna Sale: What did you learn about how our government works by being across the bar from those people?
Graham Platner: It was, it was very illuminating. I mean, because you, you really, I began to realize that the apparatus that had like sent me off to fight in these wars, uh, there were some people in it who literally didn’t care…It was all like a political choice or it was better for someone’s career or it was better for like, for some lobbying outfit that came and approached them. I mean, and also there was this realization that none of the people I met, some of them were like the smartest people I met. Some of them were the dumbest people I’d ever met.
But that’s the same as anywhere. And it was this realization that politics, it’s not actually for special people. It really is for anybody, like anybody could do this stuff. And we’ve just been sort of sold the story that it’s a special kind of person or special kinds of people.
And I began, I mean, at, at the time that manifested itself with me getting real cynical. Because like, oh really? Like my friends are dead.
Anna Sale: Would you engage like Hill staffers while you’re serving him beers?
Graham Platner: Not in this kind of conversation. Yeah. But, uh, but I definitely had moments of like, holy shit.
Like, like I thought these wars that I’m already like reeling with, trying to figure out what the purpose was, what my role in them was, all of that. And then kind of come to the conclusion like, wait, you are the people that sent us off to do this Uhhuh, it’s you guys. You guys don’t even know what the fuck’s going on….Like, I met people who were like, like talking about doing foreign policy work, who’ve never read any of the books on, like the regions that they’re talking about. I’m like, uh, this is, and that was about the time….I didn’t know what, I still thought I was gonna maybe work for the government or go back to like carrying guns somehow
And it was around. I was like, I don’t wanna be part of any of this.
You can watch our full interview too, if that’s of interest.
It’s Breakup Week on Slate’s website. Find some commiseration and cringe in this incredible collection of personal essays
Rachel Syme’s write-up in The New Yorker about Chris Fleming’s wild new HBO stand-up special is a very fun read. (“‘You don’t get to call me Terry Gross. Terry Gross is my nickname. My real name is Theresa Disgusting!’”)
Nearly one in five property transfers in California last year was made through inheritance, a state record and roughly double the national share, a new analysis found. From The Wall Street Journal, via the California Sun.
A volunteer program in Hungary that pairs tech-savvy teens with seniors who need their help, from Reasons To Be Cheerful
Science Friday’s interview this week about 3D images of galaxies with Queen’s Brian May (who is also a PhD in astronomy) is nerdiness-forward in the best way.
What a great NYTimes piece about of Sari Botton and the work she does here on Substack with Oldster Magazine and Memoir Land. And omg this about being in the job market after 50: “A 30-year-old interviewing me for a job said, ‘I’m surprised a legend like you would be interested in this job.’ It did not feel like a compliment. A 40-something interviewing me asked, ‘With all you’ve done already in this field, wouldn’t you want to move on to something different by now?’”
The podcast Switched on Pop breaks down Bruno Mars’ new album The Romantic and alllllll its music references from Latin music and 70s Philly soul. It’s a really fun listen.
Until next week,
Anna
ps. Here’s Baby Anna Politics Reporter reporting on Colorado independent voters in 2011, in a video made at WNYC by the multi-talented Amy Pearl. (Actually, she’s a grown woman in her 30s here, but still so fresh-faced!) Fun fact: Part of the thrill of doing this reporting in northern Colorado that summer was that I’d just met a new honey who lived over the border in Wyoming whom I wanted to spend more time with. (That honey became my husband.) Life/work balance, baby.
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