Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee who was contesting the U.S. Senate race in Maine, was a problematic candidate from the very start, yet his blatant shortcomings were willfully dismissed or ignored by the powers that be in his party.
As the news site Axios noted in a prescient observation, he was “a walking time bomb.”
Platner, a progressive cool to Israel, garnered the endorsement of the left-wing faction of the Democratic Party. Progressives and democratic socialists were impressed by his down-to-earth image and swayed by his pledge to challenge the party’s stodgy establishment.
Platner, billed as an oyster farmer, won the party’s nomination by a landslide in the June 9 primary. Running unopposed after Governor Janet Mills — a moderate backed by party leaders — suspended her Senate campaign in late April, he won 72 percent of the vote.
In accordance with his left-of-center views, he was critical of Israel, calling for an arms embargo and the severance of U.S. military aid to it. And he accused Israel of having committed “genocide” during its military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Hamas.
Platner’s candidacy was supported by, among others, three prominent U.S. senators — Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — and Representative Ro Khanna of California. They looked forward to his victory as an important stepping stone toward Democratic dominance in the Senate.
In addition, The New York Times, The Nation and The New Republic published flattering pieces about him, hailing him as an outsider who could shake things up in Washington.
They rallied behind Platner, a 41-year-old Marine combat veteran of the war in Iraq, despite the fact that scandals marred his reputation almost from the beginning of his campaign.
There were rumors about his sexual messages to women outside his marriage. There was talk about his apparent drinking problem. There were social media posts in which he denigrated rural white people. There was an interview with a woman who said she had been physically threatened by him.
Last but not least, Platner’s image was sullied by revelations that he had a skull-and-crossbones tattoo, a Totenkopf favored by SS officers, on his chest. He said he had gotten it in Croatia in 2007 while “inebriated” and without actually knowing what it meant. Platner told the Associated Press that he had covered it up with another tattoo, contradicting a statement by his team that he would remove it entirely from his body.
Keenly aware that he had strayed off course, Platner appealed to voters not to judge him on the basis of his troubling behavior in the past.
The majority of his supporters gave him the benefit of the doubt, much to their subsequent embarrassment.
The hammer came crashing down on Platner on July 6, when Politico reported that he had been accused of rape by Jenny Racicot, 41, a Democrat who had dated him. She said he had raped her in 2021.
Platner, in a video, labelled her accusation as “categorically false.” But two days later, under unrelenting pressure from his party, he suspended his campaign to unseat Senator Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican. In a video, Platner portrayed himself as a victim of old school Democrats who disagreed with his views.
Tellingly enough, not a single Democratic official or organization rushed in to defend him. And politicians who had previously vouched for Platner withdrew their support. Schumer and his colleague, Kirsten Gillibrand, said they would not have invested in Maine’s Senate race had Platner remained on the ballot.
On July 7, Platner’s last well-known supporter, Sanders, advised him to step aside.
Platner’s exit is “the culmination of a rapid fall from grace,” as Axios succinctly put it. But upon further examination, his rise and fall is a reflection of the party’s serious weaknesses in vetting and judgment.
To be sure, it was not its first known failure.
As Joe Biden slipped into dementia after wresting the presidency from Donald Trump, the Democrats attempted to conceal his condition despite private doubts about his mental and physical fitness.
For all intents and purposes, the party made the same mistake by nominating a flawed person like Platner, whose character was far less than stellar.
After he launched his campaign last August, senior officials in the party questioned his suitability. They took their concerns to the Fight Agency, a media consulting company that Platner had hired and that the current mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, had used during the Democratic primary.
They were assured that Platner was a viable candidate and that voters liked him because of his story of overcoming adversity.
With Platner having dropped out, the Democrats in Maine will hold a convention later this month to select a replacement. The leading candidates include Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, and Troy Jackson, a former president of the state’s Senate.
Since both were Platner supporters, the consensus is that they will hew closely to his views on the campaign trail and in the Senate if elected.