Graham Platner won Maine's Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday night with roughly 75 percent of the vote, and he did it while carrying an expanding dossier of personal scandals that would have ended most political careers before the first yard sign went up.
The Associated Press called the race at 9:23 p.m. ET. Platner, a Marine and Army National Guard veteran turned oyster farmer from Blue Hill, will now face Republican Senator Susan Collins in the general election. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters the same day that he had met with Platner and predicted, "we're going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate."
What Schumer did not address, and what the national Democratic apparatus has largely declined to confront, is a trail of allegations involving a tattoo bearing a Nazi SS symbol, accounts from multiple former romantic partners describing intimidation and heavy drinking, a sexting scandal, and a shirtless profile on the messaging app Kik. The question is no longer whether Maine Democrats knew about all of this. They did. They nominated him anyway.
The tattoo is the detail that keeps circling back. Platner has said publicly that he picked a skull-and-crossbones design off a wall in a tattoo parlor in Split, Croatia, in 2007, while drunk with Marine Corps buddies. His campaign spokesperson told reporters that the tattoo was chosen "to commemorate surviving Ramadi and his friends who were killed there." Platner released a statement last fall saying he had since covered the image and did not know it was an SS symbol.
But the Daily Mail reported that at least two women who dated Platner heard a very different explanation, directly from him.
An unnamed former girlfriend who met Platner on Tinder in 2021 told the New York Post that she confronted him after seeing the tattoo when he was shirtless. She said she recognized it immediately.
"As a person who is a leftist, I immediately looked at him and asked him, 'Is that a Totenkopf?' and he told me a whole, 'He will hold this weight forever' bravado sob story about how it was, but he decided to keep it as a reminder that the United States was the evil, bad guy overseas."
She added that Platner appeared to tailor his answer to her political leanings, "since that's one of the reasons we matched on Tinder in the first place." That explanation, the United States as "the evil, bad guy", bears no resemblance to the campaign's official line about honoring fallen friends.
Then there is Lyndsey Fifield, who said she was in a two-year, on-again, off-again relationship with Platner. Fifield, who worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the New York Times that Platner knew exactly what the tattoo meant. She said he called it "my Totenkopf" and drew a parallel between his military unit and the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or S.S.
"They literally, deliberately, selected it because it was relevant to their military unit."
Platner has denied knowing the tattoo's meaning. His public statement last fall was blunt: "I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that, and to insinuate that I did is disgusting. I already had the tattoo covered with a new design."
So voters are left with two competing accounts. In one, a young veteran drunkenly picked a random design off a parlor wall in Croatia and only later learned its significance. In the other, he knew what it was, used its German name in private, and offered different explanations to different women depending on their politics.
The tattoo is far from the only problem. A New York Times report published in the final days before the primary featured accounts from three women, Fifield, Maine Democrat Jenny Racicot, and a third unnamed Maine Democrat, who described troubling behavior.
Fifield said Platner "never hit me, he never punched me," but described a pattern of physical intimidation. She said he would regularly grab her by the shoulders, sometimes leaving marks, and once pulled her from a taxi by her wrist during an argument. She recalled one incident in which Platner twisted her arm behind her back, pushed her into a bedroom, and held the door shut, telling her to stay there until she was "calm." As RealClearPolitics noted, PBS anchor Amna Nawaz summarized Fifield's account on air: "She claims that he was violent, says he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a room, and held the door to confine her."
Fifield described the physical contact plainly: "It hurt. It didn't cause an injury, it didn't break my arm."
Racicot described Platner's behavior to the Times as "reckless" and "unsettling." She said that when she later saw his old online comments, "I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with." The unnamed Maine Democrat said she felt like "collateral damage to the world that is his" and described Platner as charismatic at times but prone to heavy bouts of drinking.
Platner's campaign responded with a statement acknowledging a "very dark period" in his life. He said he "struggled with undiagnosed PTSD, too often self-medicated with alcohol, and was a far from perfect boyfriend." He added: "Any characterization beyond that is false, and I believe, politically motivated."
The personal controversies extend beyond the tattoo and the women's accounts. Platner faced a sexting scandal involving explicit messages to other women while married. The Daily Mail viewed a shirtless profile picture of Platner on the messaging app Kik. Platner dismissed the reports about sexting and the Kik profile as "gossip," and he and his wife, Amy Gertner, reaffirmed "a very happy marriage."
There were also controversial Reddit posts. Platner described them to the Advocate last year as including "homophobic slurs, anti-LGBTQ+ jokes and sexually explicit stories denigrating gay men." One of Platner's top advisers, Daniel Moraff, drew his own scrutiny after the Daily Mail reported he had authored a "humorous" essay that included sexual fantasies involving Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Platner's response to the cascade of stories has followed a consistent pattern: acknowledge mistakes in general terms, invoke his military service and personal growth, and pivot to attacking Collins. In his victory speech from Blue Hill, he said:
"Redemption is not just some simple or easy destination, it's a journey. I've made mistakes in my life. Mistakes that I regret, that I live with. That I continue to learn from. I'm still far from perfect."
He then turned his fire on Collins, calling her "spineless and corrupt" and claiming she had become "21 times wealthier" in office. "Susan Collins is getting rich while we're getting screwed," he said.
The national Democratic response has been telling. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are still backing Platner. House Democrat Ro Khanna spoke at a rally for him last weekend. Schumer met with him on primary day and publicly predicted victory.
But cracks are forming. Newsmax reported that Rep. Josh Gottheimer publicly urged Platner to surrender the nomination and "get off the ballot," warning that "the issues are just going to keep piling up." Former Platner campaign political director Genevieve McDonald went further, writing that Platner "is not someone who would be good for Maine or for the country" and urging Democrats to use the convention process to install another nominee if needed.
Governor Janet Mills, who suspended her own campaign on April 30 but remained on the ballot, did not resume active campaigning even after the wave of negative press. She reminded voters she was "still on the ballot." About 18 percent of Democrats chose Mills anyway, a notable protest vote for a candidate who wasn't campaigning.
The unnamed former girlfriend who dated Platner in 2021 posted on X after the primary, warning: "It does not stop here. There will be more information that comes out. There will be more people affected by the harm he has caused or allowed to be caused."
Platner enters the general election with real advantages on paper. Maine went for Kamala Harris in 2024. A UMass Lowell/YouGov poll taken last week showed Platner leading Collins 48 percent to 43 percent. The GOP holds 53 Senate seats, and Democrats view Collins as one of their best pickup opportunities.
That is precisely why the party's willingness to tolerate Platner's baggage matters. Democrats are not standing behind him despite the scandals. They are standing behind him because the seat matters more to them than the scandals do. Schumer's calculus is transparent: the path to a Senate majority runs through Maine, and Platner is the vehicle, whatever his history.
Platner's campaign has tried to reframe the scrutiny as a Republican operation. His team called Fifield "a lifelong GOP operative who's dedicated her career to electing Republicans." The campaign spokesperson contrasted Platner's willingness to answer questions with Collins, who "refuses to take questions on her disastrous vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh."
But Fifield is not the only accuser. Racicot is a Maine Democrat. The unnamed third woman is a Maine Democrat. The unnamed former girlfriend who confronted Platner about the tattoo described herself as "a leftist." Dismissing all of them as partisan actors requires ignoring their own stated politics.
Maine Democrats had the information. The tattoo story broke last fall. The Reddit posts surfaced. The New York Times published its account of the women's allegations days before the primary. Platner's own campaign acknowledged the "dark period." And 75 percent of primary voters pulled the lever for him anyway.
Platner closed his victory speech with a line aimed at Collins: "Senator Collins, I got blown up while you handed out billions of dollars to defense companies that invested in you. Sorry, that you invested in. You and your friends profited, my friends died."
It was a polished applause line. But the open questions have nothing to do with Susan Collins. They have to do with whether a man who allegedly gave different women different stories about a Nazi symbol on his chest, and who faces detailed, on-the-record accounts of physical intimidation from former partners, is someone a major party should be sending to the United States Senate.
Democrats used to say they believed women. Apparently that depends on whether the accused is their guy.
