Encounter Books

Has anyone seen Graham Platner’s tramp stamp? “I grew up as a little punk rock kid listening to Dead Kennedys and Dropkick Murphys,” Graham Platner, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for the open Maine Senate seat said yesterday at a town hall in Ogunquit. He neglected to include the information that as a little punk rock kid he attended Hotchkiss, a private boarding school in Connecticut that currently costs more than $70,000 a year for tuition and meals, whose alumni include the founders of Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers. Such details rarely appeal to the common people. Platner, who runs an unprofitable oyster farm, served eight years in the Marines after high school.

With her vote to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker, Nancy Mace has made herself the pariah of the House. And after donning a red, Scarlet Letter-style “A” on her chest to reflect this as she headed into House GOP meetings this week, she caught the ire of the Capitol Hill Fashion Police too. One of her colleagues intimated the “A” must stand for “attention” — and lamented that “there wasn’t enough bling” on it and that “a light-up version would’ve been better.” In a Congress filled with all but literal skeletons, Mace stands out for her relative youth. One staffer had no problem with her choice of outfits this week.