Meet the champagne socialist duo who groomed rich kid Graham Platner into a working-class candidate

Graham Platner has done a better job of hiding his privileged roots than the Nazi tattoo on his chest — a move which is by design.The embattled Maine senate candidate is vocal about his disabled war veteran, rugged oyster farmer, “working class” persona; less about his attendance at an $80,000-a-year boarding school, lawyer father, or major architect grandfather.That’s because he’s been coached how to present himself, molded to present a specific image and, in a sense, manufactured.The truth is he was discovered and coached by a pair of Ivy League-educated radical Democratic Socialists, replicating a playbook they’ve used in Nebraska and Iowa.That revelation could be more damaging than the tattoo, sexting women other than his wife, blasting fellow veterans and admitting to masturbating in a port-a-potty, as it strikes at the heart of Platner’s alleged authenticity.And for his champagne socialist handlers, the more scandals that engulf Platner and the more centrist outrage he can stoke, the better as it gets more stories written and drowns out his opponent in November, incumbent Susan Collins.“For all we know, they’re leaking this stuff because they want to get more attention,” a former candidate who hired the same team behind Platner a few years ago told The Post.That under-the-radar team are a couple, Yale Law School grad Daniel Moraff and his fiancé, Leanne Fan, an academic with stints at Harvard and the proudly radical University of California-Berkeley.The pair had originally met while working for Bernie Sanders in 2020 (I-Vt.) and are hardcore members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

They have previously been behind candidates Dan Osborn, running for senate in Nebraska, and Summer Lee, a member of the Pennsylvania State House since 2018 and part of the DSA ‘squad’, alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.In summer 2025, Moraff and Fan were in Maine scouting for a new candidate.They had settled on Union boss Chri...