How much baggage will Democrats accept from Maine's Graham Platner?
How much are Democrats willing to take to continue their support of Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner?
So far, they’ve accepted that he has a Nazi tattoo. They’ve accepted that he has posted in online forums in 2013 that rape victims should take accountability and, in 2020, called rural Americans "stupid" and "racist." As late as 2019, he was posting that U.S. Army Pfc. Ted Daniels, who had been shot in Afghanistan, didn’t deserve to live and openly rooted for the Taliban. About those comments he said, "I’m proud that I got through a dark period in my life, and I’m proud of the life that I live now." When did that dark period end, exactly?
In a story from a few days ago, Platner’s wife told campaign staff that he had been sending sexually explicit messages to several women as recently as last year and using the questionable messaging app Kik. Is that part of the dark period too?
Now a New York Times story exposes more about Platner’s personality and none of it is good. The story itself is a very soft touch, careful not to say anything too terrible about the likely Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Maine. But the fact that the liberal outlet decided to run the story at all is evidence that there is something there.
The Times interviewed several women, including Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner from 2013 to 2015. Fifield is specifically described as "a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns" as if that context means her claims can be dismissed. They shouldn’t be.
Fifield says that Platner knew his tattoo had Nazi origins and, in fact, his unit chose that tattoo specifically for that reason. "Ms. Fifield said he told her that he and other members of his unit selected the tattoo because ‘they were like a death unit, they were killers,’ and saw a parallel between their unit and the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or S.S., unit, that used the skull-and-crossbones image. ‘They literally, deliberately, selected it because it was relevant to their military unit,’ she said."
This is in direct contrast to the story Platner has tried to tell since October 2021, the same month he finally got it removed, that he just got a cool-looking tattoo while on leave. Fifield told friends about the Nazi tattoo in August. How could she have known about it before he did? The reality is he knew it was a Nazi tattoo all along and Democrats are still standing by him.
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Fifield also alleges that Platner was often rough with her. She’s careful not to say that he hit her, "But she said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car. During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was ‘calm.’ Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning."
The New York Times calls this "unsettling behavior" but in most other contexts it would rightly identify this as abuse.
Answering the accusations, "Mr. Platner said he had ‘too often self-medicated with alcohol, and was a far from perfect boyfriend’ during what he described as a ‘very dark period of my life.’"
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Maybe it would be easier for Platner to point to a time in his life that hasn’t been a "dark" period.
The day before the Times story hit, Platner met with Democratic senators and assured them there were no other negative stories to be told about him. The Wall Street Journal reported, "Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who also attended the meeting, followed up and said there is a big difference between marital issues and allegations of sexual assault, the people said. Platner agreed and denied any credible allegations of assault were forthcoming."
It’s sad that a Nazi tattoo and all the rest haven’t been enough for Warren to pull support, but interesting that she would make such a specific query about sexual assault. Platner’s answer about "credible" allegations also makes it seem as if he knows more stories are possibly in the works.
It’s only early June and so many damning allegations and details about Platner have already surfaced. The primary hasn’t even happened yet. How much more will Democrats accept in the service of trying to defeat the intensely moderate Republican Susan Collins? Can they be confident the New York Times story is the last of it after they were already assured there would be no more? Or is it that once they’ve decided they can accept a candidate with a Nazi tattoo who had minimized rape victims and mocked military members in combat there’s nothing they can’t accept?