French officials insist the Louvre’s security measures were working properly when eight precious crown jewels – worth more than $100 million – were stolen in broad daylight from the world’s most visited museum in Paris. 

Investigators say the heist lasted fewer than eight minutes, and the thieves were only inside the building half of that time. 

“Quite honestly we were scared to death. We thought it was worse. We thought it was like a terrorist attack or something,” Curt Dale Clark recalled.

Tour group forcefully pushed back

Dozens of travelers from the Maine State Music Theatre were inside the Louvre walking toward the Apollo Gallery Sunday morning when suddenly, their tour group was forcefully pushed back. 

“We were actually really offended because we didn’t understand the language, so we didn’t know why it was happening. But then when we started seeing, you know, military with machine guns and SWAT teams, we realized, oh, something pretty serious is going on,” said Clark, who is the theatre’s artistic director. 

Investigators say a broken window triggered the museum’s alarm. Police arrived two or three minutes after receiving a call, but those thieves were long gone – making their getaway on motorcycles. As the Maine tour group was ushered outside and onto their bus, the evacuation began to make sense. 

“And as we were coming out of the building and turning left, we saw the ladder that they had climbed up and into the building, used their chainsaws to break it open and then climbed back down that ladder,” Clark explained. 

Around 100 investigators are now involved in the search for the thieves and eight stolen treasures – a loss described as a wound to French culture. 

“To know that you were there when that happened, it was crazy. absolutely crazy. Something this tour group, I promise you, will never forget,” he added. 

The priceless crown jewels would still be worth millions if broken up and sold on the black market. French law prohibits institutions like the Louvre from insuring its property, except when part of a collection is moved or loaned. 

On October 15, Graham Platner, the 41-year-old military veteran and rural Maine oyster farmer running for U.S. Senate, told The Bulwark that “I don’t have that many” skeletons in his closest. Asked about the fact he is “just not as tested” as the newest entrant to the race, the 77-year-old incumbent Governor Janet Mills, Platner replied, “We’ve been sending up well-tested people for decades, and the country is in worse straits than it’s ever been.” 

On October 16, questionable social media posts by Platner began to make their way into the media, in which he victim-blamed rape survivors, asked “why don’t black people tip?”, suggested support for political violence, and dubbed himself a “communist” and a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist.” In a thread titled, “white people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks,” Platner responded, “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are.”  One of Platner’s top campaign aides resigned in response. The candidate has since been on an apology tour, characterizing the comments as byproducts of a rough transition into civilian life after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not reflective of who he is today. 

When Mills entered the race to be the nominee against the Democratic Party’s white whale—five-term incumbent Senator Susan Collins—concerns about Mills’s age immediately surfaced, although Collins herself will turn 73 later this year. Some Democrats expressed frustration with yet another septuagenarian running for high office—after the calamitous, truncated Joe Biden re-election effort and the painful end of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s career.  

Furthermore, Platner had been in the race for two months, earning favorable attention and endorsements from Senator Bernie Sanders as well as big unions thanks to his gruff, blunt charisma, military service, and blue-collar work as an oysterman, and left-leaning politics. Shouldn’t the aging Mills let a fresh face take the spotlight? 

The downside of that logic is now plain. A handful of social media rantings is not “that many” skeletons, but they are enough to rattle Platner’s chances. 

The former Marine still has defenders, not just regarding his own character, but regarding how we should view unvarnished social media posting in the modern age. Representative Ro Khanna, on X, accused the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of leaking Platner’s social media history to the media, and declared, “I respect Platner’s journey & the man he is today. I reject the politics of personal destruction. I stand by my endorsement.” Ryan Grim of Drop Site News on X, in response to Platner’s disavowal video, argued more broadly, “If being angry as a young man disqualifies you from running for office later as a Democrat, Dems will have basically no men running.” 

People of any gender can be and have been intemperate on social media, so I don’t think gender is relevant to whether Democrats should shun candidates with checkered social media histories. But there’s validity to the argument that in the social media era, it’s really easy to have bad moments online that don’t capture an individual’s full character. Besides, there are many people in elective office—including in the Oval Office—who have overcome, or even embraced, offensive posts. So, why assume that voters will find Platner’s past disqualifying? 

However, the question runs both ways: Why assume Platner can convince voters his social media past is not indicative of flawed character? Platner isn’t as tested as Mills, not just as a candidate but as a public official.  

To Platner’s credit, the resident of tiny Sullivan near Bar Harbor, chairs his town’s planning board and is harbormaster. (Maine has cool government positions!) But if Platner were a state legislator or statewide official, he could more easily tell Maine voters: You know me, you’ve worked with me, you’ve seen my record of accomplishments, and you know these old posts don’t reflect who I am today and how I would serve as your United States Senator.  

Being in the statehouse doesn’t make one bulletproof of course. Collins survived her last campaign against Sara Gideon, who was Speaker of the Maine House, thanks to a negative ad campaign full of falsehoods. But without some sort of track record and a relationship with the Maine electorate, a candidate has little ability to defuse questions about character.  

So instead of asking the entire state of Maine to roll the dice, Platner should consider competing for the District 12 seat in the Maine House of Representatives. 

That seat is currently held by the Republicans’ House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham. Whatever is in Platner’s past can’t compare to Faulkingham’s past criminal convictions for assault and “throwing a bucket of excrement” at people. Presumably defeating a Republican incumbent in rural Maine would be a challenge for Platner, but if he truly has the charisma as a straight-talking Maine veteran and oyster farmer, then let’s see it work on the local level before presuming it’ll work statewide.  

Maybe Platner isn’t a racist, misogynistic communist. But that’s not enough to conclude he is prepared to run a U.S. Senate campaign, much less be a United States Senator. Younger Democrats should be moving up the ranks. But going step-by-step still has its merits.  

Related

Five years after running for Congress, former state Rep. Dale Crafts was back in front of a crowd to propose a major change to his town’s form of government.

“Unfortunately … four people on a seven-person town council can decide a majority vote on our destiny,” he said. “Four people!”

Crafts was describing what he sees as the failures of the Lisbon Town Council that he’s now running to join. But he was also describing a strategy that he and three longtime friends are using to try to take over the town council before potentially dismantling it.

The former Republican lawmaker is the face of one of the hottest property tax revolts in Maine. His Androscoggin County town of nearly 10,000 residents weathered a 20% property tax bump that was crafted to fill a multi-million dollar budget hole caused by a clerical error, years of inflation and high spending.

Town councilors approved that $13.9 million budget in July. Since then, Crafts and other conservatives in the town have focused on opposing the school budget, the only one that residents control. Lisbon has voted the exact same school budget down twice. A slightly slimmed-down version will be on the ballot for a third time alongside the town council race.

This happened in large part due to Crafts. Using his pre-existing political action committee, he purchased mailers arguing for no votes on the school budget. The 66-year-old said he thought he had retired from politics after losing to U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District in 2020, but the tax revolt brought him back in.

“I’ve worked hard all my life and I wasn’t planning on being up here,” he said at a candidate forum at Lisbon Community School on Tuesday. “I’m here to try to make a difference. I feel compelled by God to do this.”

Crafts’ message that longtime Lisbon residents may be priced out of their homes by rising property taxes has resonated. While most of the nine candidates for council expressed an openness to making cuts and looking for ways to reduce property tax increases, Crafts is campaigning most stridently on austerity and riding a wave of anger at the town budget.

His political group has spent $16,000 this year, with much of that going toward the school and municipal elections. He is promoting a trio of longtime friends, Roger Bickford, Greg Garnett and Eric Metivier, with matching lawn signs. With four open council seats, that slate alone could elect the next council chair and control the flow of business.

Crafts is running against three political newcomers for a two-year term on the council. For the other three open seats, his allies are taking on incumbent Jo-Jean Keller and Charlie Turgeon, another candidate drawn in by the ongoing budget crisis.

Turgeon, a project manager on military projects, is running a more moderate campaign than Crafts, saying he rejected his opponents’ “cut, cut, cut regime.” But he has promised to examine the scope of government and find ways to reduce future budgets by outsourcing and privatizing some services.

Turgeon became involved earlier this year when he organized a petition to require the town to hold referendums on town budgets going forward. That eventually resulted in the town council asking voters whether they want to establish a charter commission, which would be tasked with revising Lisbon’s governing document. In addition to four council seats and the school budget, that question will also be on the November ballot.

If voters approve a charter commission in November, it would kick off a long process of review that could change how Lisbon functions, including possibly reverting to a town meeting form of government in which voters would decide the local budget.

The council would hold no direct power to disband itself, but its members could hold sway with a future commission.

If elected, it would not be Crafts’ first time on the council. He served on the town’s very first council after its creation by the town’s current charter, made in 2006. He says he’s longed to return to town meeting budgeting since then.

“After I served on the first town council form of government, I said to myself, ‘this isn’t good,’” he told residents last week. “And look where we’re at.”