Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner defiant amid controversy: ‘I’m in this ’til the end’

On a recent Monday night, Graham Platner – oysterman, army veteran and Democratic hopeful for US Senate – took the stage in a small Maine town known for its oyster farming to assure voters that he was still in the game to win the Democratic primary, and ultimately unseat five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins.

He addressed a crowd of 700, the most that could fit into the school gymnasium in Damariscotta, Maine before organizers had to start turning people away. As is typical for his campaign events, the gruff, plain-talking, flannel-clad, local business owner and former marine dissected the “establishment political system that serves the interests of the ultra wealthy” in front of a captivated audience.

Excitement around Platner snowballed after he announced his run for office in late August, with his campaign raising more than $3m in donations in a matter of weeks. He established himself as both a populist paragon, and a vessel for selling liberal policies that have been part of national Democrats’ ongoing autopsy since Donald Trump won back the White House in 2024.

“People are sick and tired of politics as usual, and I am too,” Platner told the Guardian. “We’re just always being represented by people that come from wealth, people that come from backgrounds of power … Mainers, frankly, seem to be just champing at the bit to do something different.”

But after multiple controversies from Platner’s past have come to light, he now finds himself embattled in a morass of damage control. Over the past few weeks, there has been a steady drip of reports featuring Platner’s unearthed racist, sexist and homophobic online comments. Then, Platner tried to get ahead of the story when he revealed, and then covered, a tattoo on his chest that closely resembles a Nazi symbol. Meanwhile, he’s had to justify staff turnover at the top level of his campaign while he addresses his past actions.

Platner said there was a pronounced disconnect between the national media attention that his deleted posts and tattoo have received, and the impact they had on voters in his state. “It’s very surreal to have the kind of big, almost incomprehensibly huge political space be utterly convinced that this is all coming to an end, and I’m this horrifically controversial person,” he said. “And then, in Maine, everybody’s like ‘hey man, keep with it, we all make mistakes. People move through life, they learn, and we’re here for it’.”

The political outsider, who is making his first foray into public office, hasn’t shied away from talking about his past.

“If you liked what I was saying three weeks ago, I’m still saying the exact same thing now,” Platner said, emphasizing that the disillusionment he felt while writing online was part of the “journey” that brought him to where he is today.

“I’m still dedicated to rebuilding a politics that is more accessible for working people. I am still dedicated towards ending our horrific spending when it comes to foreign military conflicts and nothing for the American working class, those things all remain the same,” he added. “If I start walking back my commitments to the things that define me now, then absolutely begin to question and walk away from me, because I would deserve it.”

The material impact of the controversy around Platner has yet to be seen. A recent poll by the University of New Hampshire (albeit before news of his tattoo broke) had him leading Mills by 34 points; his rallies and town halls across the state have attracted thousands; and his key backer, Independent senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, has continued to throw his weight behind the former marine. “There might be one or two more important issues,” Sanders told Axios.

Various Democratic lawmakers and leaders have also come to Platner’s defense. Senator Ruben Gallego, of Arizona, told Semafor that “everyone has a right to grow and grow out of their stupidity.” Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin said that Platner’s past comments are “indefensible”, but didn’t think they were “disqualifying”. “Certainly they’re not right, and I’m glad that he apologized for them,” he added. Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, said that the veteran “sounds like a human being” who “made mistakes”, when pressed about the news of Platner’s tattoo in an interview with CNN.

Not everyone has been so forgiving.

Platner’s troubles started with resurfaced Reddit posts spanning from 2013 to 2021, in which he claimed to be a “communist”, called police officers “bastards”, labelled white, rural Americans “stupid” and “racist”, made anti-LGBTQ+ jokes and remarks (including using slurs), questioned why “Black people didn’t tip”, and said that survivors and victims of sexual assault should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up”.

After the first tranche of revelations, his political director, Genevieve McDonald, a former Maine state representative, walked away from his campaign, and Platner issued a direct-to-camera mea culpa on Instagram, branding his past comments as inexcusable, but also a side-effect from the trauma he endured during his time in the military.

Platner, now 41, has spoken candidly about the severe PTSD he battled after serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I witnessed violence and horror at a scale that I was not quite prepared for all the service of something that I now believe was pointless,” he told the audience on Monday.

Then, in an October interview with Pod Save America, in an attempt to get ahead of opposition research that could have beaten him to the punch, Platner admitted to getting inked with a tattoo of skull and crossbones. The illustration resembles the Totenkopf, an emblem that was used by the Nazi Schutzstaffel.

The former marine said that he got the tattoo after a night drinking with military buddies in Croatia 18 years ago, but noted that, until recently, he was unaware of its meaning.“I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I’ve not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years,” he told the podcast. He subsequently revealed his covered up symbol in a local news interview.

For her part, McDonald wasn’t convinced, and wrote a scathing Facebook post undermining Platner. “He’s a military history buff,” she said. “Maybe he didn’t know when he got it, but he got it years ago, and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”

Platner told the Guardian that McDonald’s claims are untrue. “She left using the stress of that week as her reason for leaving,” he said. “But she had had friction within the campaign for a little while, and that was kind of the culmination of it.”

He also said that the resignation of his newly-minted campaign manager and old friend, Kevin Brown, after just a few days on the job, was not to do with Platner’s recent political issues. “He and his wife just recently found out that they were pregnant and moving to Maine and taking this campaign on was just too much,” Platner said. “I’ll just be up front, he never was serving really as a campaign manager, everything happened within about a 24-hour period … he and I are still very close.”

In the midst of it all, Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, officially launched her own long-awaited Senate bid, securing an endorsement from minority leader Chuck Schumer, and turning the primary race into a referendum on the populist versus establishment wings of the party in the process. At 77, Mills would be also the oldest freshman senator in Congress if elected.

The state’s Libertarian streak could work in Platner’s favor, as Maine voters can be “inconsistent” in their ideological positions, according to Michael Franz, a political science professor at Bowdoin College who focuses on voting behavior. “The long history of Maine politicians with national profiles and established reputations as being leaders in Washington who stand up, not only for principles, but have a deep sense of place here in the state, is sort of the special sauce,” he said.

However, despite the seven month runway to the June Democratic primary, Franz doesn’t see Platner’s controversies evaporating. “I still think it will be used pretty effectively and pretty consistently to point out that Platner doesn’t have a political foundation, doesn’t have a history of politics, and we don’t know much about him beyond you know what he tells us and what we’ve determined and found out from from these social media posts.”

This week, Mills issued a public rebuke of her primary challenger. “I obviously, vehemently disagree with the things he’s been quoted as saying and doing,” she said, stopping short of calling him to drop out of the race. “It’s up to him. It’s up to the people.”

Another challenger, Jordan Wood, told the Guardian that Platner’s actions mean he’s “disqualified for consideration in my mind”. Wood, who served as congresswoman Katie Porter’s chief of staff, is the only openly gay Senate candidate on the Democratic ballot in Maine. “It’s not politics,” he said. “It’s very personal. I’m a gay man and I’m married to a Jew. We have a child.” Wood did note that he would ultimately support whoever secures the nomination.

In Damariscotta, at his second campaign event since he began wading through the molasses of political controversy, Platner made light of the last two weeks. “I am running as a Democrat, still, despite the fact my party is trying to destroy my life,” he said.

When Platner was pressed by audience members about some of the recent revelations, including from a trans voter who wanted some reassurance that the harbormaster would fight for their community, Platner was forthright. “I have no patience for a politics that is willing to sell people out,” he said. “I also fully recognize that as a cis white man with a bunch of tattoos and a long combat record that I get to put myself out there in ways that other people don’t.”

Still, Platner remains the riskier choice when compared to the “supremely vetted” and “supremely tested” Mills, according to Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine.

Thirty years ago, Brewer adds, revelations like Platner’s might have rendered a Senate campaign dead in the water, but since Trump’s 2016 run – and the leaked Access Hollywood tape where the now-president is heard bragging about using his fame to have sex with women, and groping them without waiting for their consent – all bets are off.

“If Platner is able to survive these kinds of things, maybe this is an area where Trump has changed the rules on what’s acceptable and what’s disqualifying,” Brewer said.

Democrats remain on the hunt for congressional candidates that might offer a way out of the wilderness, and win back members of the tent – particularly disenchanted working-class men – that have since abandoned the party.

Voters in the mid-coast region of the state who showed up to see Platner on Monday, cheered and applauded when he said that he had “no right” to step away from the Senate race, and held up signs that read “schuck the oligarchy”.

“I thought he addressed it really well. My concerns on that are gone,” said Ann Scanlon, who lives in nearby Bristol. “I think we need somebody like him to re-energize and get it moving back in the right direction again.”

Scanlon, 65, runs an art gallery and recently started receiving Medicare benefits. The future of the healthcare program for American seniors is top of mind for her. “I don’t want to see people locked out of nursing homes because they have nowhere to live,” Scanlon said.

Stacie Brookes, 57, said that Platner felt “sincere”, “genuine” and unlike other politicians she’s used to hearing from. “I’m in this camp now, and I will stay in this camp as long as he grows and continues to grow.”

Brookes, a waitress from Bremen, relies on Affordable Care Act subsidies to afford her monthly premiums. “It’s directly gonna impact me come January 1,” she said.

Her son Sebastian Crocetti, 26, is focused on affordability, one of Platner’s key issues going into next year’s election. “I would love to buy property,” the construction worker and former carpenter said. “It just feels so hard to get ahead.”

Platner often uses his own experiences to inform his economic agenda. “It is the healthcare that I get from the VA that not only gave me the treatment I needed to overcome the mental and physical scars of war, but it also gave me the freedom to build the life I wanted to build,” he told the audience at this week’s town hall. “It allowed me to start a business. It allowed me to take the risk of moving back to my hometown and building a life on the sea.”

While Platner says that Collins is the “charade of fake moderation”, he argues that Janet Mills is running the “same kind of old fashioned campaign” that won’t be enough to offer lasting change.

“The reason that I am in the race is because I don’t believe that the governor and I have the same politics,” he told the Guardian. “People go into power and then don’t try to do anything big. Everything is like playing around in the margins. I think that that is the kind of politics that comes out of someone who’s been in this system for as long as the governor has.”

That, according to Platner, is not to say he’s averse to working in a bipartisan way with lawmakers who might disagree with him on certain issues, like senator Josh Hawley, on getting the Senate and Congress to stop trading stocks and bonds. “I would be excited to work with him on that kind of thing again,” he said.

While Platner continues to address the recent fallout over his past indiscretions, he remains resolute and undeterred. “I did not go looking for this opportunity in my life, but when it showed up, to say no to it, to not do it, would feel like an abdication of a responsibility,” he said. “I’m in this ‘til the end.”