Dem primary turns ugly: Mills unleashes brutal attack on Sanders-backed Platner in crucial Senate showdown
Gov. Janet Mills of Maine on Tuesday launched a blistering negative ad that takes aim at twin controversies surrounding Graham Platner, her formidable rival for the Democratic Senate nomination in the crucial 2026 race to face off against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
The ad features women reacting to comments Platner made over a decade ago on Reddit about rape, and it also points to a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol.
The Mills ad comes as Platner, a U.S. Marine and Army veteran and oyster farmer, who has the backing of progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is gaining momentum. According to recent polls, Platner holds a large lead over the governor with less than three months until Maine's primary.
Democrats view Collins as vulnerable as she seeks a sixth six-year term in the Senate in the left-leaning Northern New England state, and the race is considered a must win for Democrats as they try to claw back the chamber's majority from the GOP in this year's midterms.
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The Mills campaign spot highlights Graham's comments, as an actor in a voice that resembles the candidate, reads snippets of them aloud. Among the comments is one from 2013, which Platner later deleted, that people concerned about rape should not "get so f---ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to."
Four women in the Mills ad respond to the comments, calling them, "a horrible thing to say," "disgusting" and "disqualifying."
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The ad, which the Mills campaign says it's spending six figures to run statewide on broadcast and cable TV and streaming, also spotlights Platner's tattoo as it closes with video of him shirtless.
"The closer you look, the worse it gets," the narrator in the spot says.
Platner said last fall that he got the skull and crossbones tattoo in 2007 while drinking with fellow Marines stationed in Croatia. He said that he covered up the tattoo with a new design after learning it resembled a Nazi symbol.
The candidate also apologized for his controversial Reddit posts after they made headlines last fall soon after he launched his Senate campaign.
"For those of you who have read these things and been offended, have read these things and seen someone that you don’t recognize, I am deeply sorry," he said in a video that went viral.
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Platner, 41, has campaigned in front of large and energetic crowds since jumping into the race, and seems to be gaining support from a Democratic base angry with President Donald Trump's second-term agenda and mad at their party's leaders in the nation's capital. Platner is being advised by Morris Katz, who was a top consultant last year on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's historic campaign.
Mills, who was urged by the party's establishment to run for the Senate, has the tacit support of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
With the primary campaign heating up, the 78-year-old two-term governor and former Maine attorney general is getting more aggressive in spotlighting Platner's political baggage, which she and other Democrats argue could cost their party their best shot ever at unseating Collins.
Platner's campaign manager Ben Chin, in a statement responding to the Mills ad, argued, "This is nothing more than a desperate attempt for relevance from the governor, who is trailing an oyster farmer in every recent poll."
"It’s why people hate politics and why not enough real people run for office: DC insiders who are so obsessed with their own power and threatened by someone who is building an actual movement of working people, that they launch a barrage of attacks to try to tear Graham down," Chin added.
And he emphasized that "Mainers know that Graham should not be defined by the worst thing he said on the internet over a decade ago."