Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, officially filed paperwork Friday to remove his name from the November ballot, ending one of the more spectacular political flameouts in recent memory. This is a man who had a Nazi-emblem tattoo, posted racist and homophobic content online, and is now facing sexual assault allegations, and he was somehow the Democratic nominee in a must-win Senate race. The state party would like you to know they are handling it.
How Did We Get Here
Let's run through the timeline quickly, because it deserves to be said out loud. Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine veteran, won the June 9 primary with more than 156,000 votes. He ran as a populist outsider, and Democrats in Maine were genuinely excited about him. Then came the social media posts full of racist, sexist, and homophobic language. Then came the questions about a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi emblem. Then, this week, came sexual assault allegations.
That is a full bingo card. That is not bad luck, that is a categorically different situation from the standard political scandal. And yet Platner managed to hold on through the first two rounds before finally suspending his campaign Wednesday and completing the official paperwork Friday, as The Guardian reports Maine's secretary of state confirmed.
The Video That Made Everything Worse
Before filing to withdraw, Platner posted an 11-minute video in which he denied the sexual assault allegations and claimed, according to The Guardian, that the Democratic establishment was "using these allegations to take away all of the things we need to run a campaign." He said of the accusations: "This is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It's not real."
That is a very specific denial. It is also the kind of denial that tends to age poorly. His formal withdrawal letter, shared on social media Friday, made no mention of the sexual assault allegations at all. He wrote about populism, about change, about "a new kind of politics." He called for the movement built under his name to continue. He said his ballot line "belongs to the people of Maine." What he did not say is why he was actually leaving.
The Party That Vetted This Guy
Maine Democratic Party executive director Devon Murphy-Anderson told NBC News, with what must have required tremendous composure, that "Graham Platner dropping out today was the right thing to do" and that the sexual assault allegations "were very real and they were very credible." Great. Glad we cleared that up.
The question nobody in the state party seems eager to answer is how a candidate with a Nazi tattoo, a history of posting racist and homophobic content online, and apparently credible sexual assault allegations in his background got through a primary process without any of this surfacing in time to matter. Platner attributed the old social media posts to struggles with PTSD, per The Guardian. The party, for its part, is now scrambling.
What Comes Next in Maine
Democrats have until July 27 to finalize ballots, which means they have days, not weeks, to hold a nominating convention and pick someone who has, at minimum, not had a Nazi tattoo. The Guardian reports that several candidates are already in the mix: Troy Jackson, a former Maine state senator; Shenna Bellows, the current Maine secretary of state; and Nirav Shah, the former director of the Maine CDC.
The stakes here are not small. Maine is a must-win state for Democrats trying to take back the Senate, and their opponent is Susan Collins, a five-term Republican incumbent who has survived every wave election thrown at her since 1996. Collins is beatable. She has been beatable before. But you have to actually show up with a candidate who clears a pretty minimal bar, and Democrats in Maine are currently speed-running the process of finding one.
The Dingo Take
Here is the thing about this story that should make Democrats genuinely angry and not just embarrassed. Maine matters. Susan Collins matters. Control of the Senate matters. And the state party either did not vet their eventual nominee thoroughly enough to surface any of this, or they did and proceeded anyway because his primary numbers looked good. Either option is a damning indictment of how seriously they are taking this cycle.
Platner's exit letter called for "a new kind of politics." You know what a new kind of politics might involve? Candidates who do not have Nazi imagery tattooed on their bodies. That is a floor, not a ceiling. That is a starting point so low it should not need to be stated. The fact that Maine Democrats are now scrambling to hold an emergency convention three weeks before a ballot deadline because their nominee failed to clear it tells you something ugly about the state of the party's infrastructure when it actually matters.
The good news, if you want to call it that, is that the replacement field looks legitimate. Jackson, Bellows, and Shah are all credible names with real records. Democrats can still win this seat. But they burned weeks and political oxygen on a candidate who was a walking background check failure, and Susan Collins is sitting in her office right now watching all of this and smiling. She has earned the right.
