General Discussion

A month before Platner announced his candidacy, the New York Times stopped by and took a boat tour with him accompanied by photographs of the future Senate candidate in his usual working class drag, gimme cap and t-shirt, harvesting and shucking oysters. Those pictures were then reused for the Times profile on his Senate campaign (a privilege most local candidates don’t get) leaving readers with the impression it’s a one-man operation.

(Tourism at $95 a person appears to form a significant part of Platner’s business.)

Graham Platner’s takeover of an existing oyster business was actually funded by a $20,000 grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, a Greek billionaire’s nonprofit, and by his mother, Leslie Harlow, a local businesswoman who owns two restaurants and a gift shop in the area.

“His best customer happens to be his mom,” one description put it. “The fact that I get to have a personal and business relationship with my mom, the fact that my mom has a restaurant that I get to sell my products at, it’s really quite wonderful,” Graham Platner said in a video profile.