House Democrat says he thinks Platner will ‘get off the ballot soon’

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) on Tuesday said Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner should win his primary on Tuesday and then get off the ballot so that Democrats can replace him with a stronger candidate in the fall.

Platner is expected to win Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Senate. He would then face Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in the general election in a crucial race for determining which party will control the Senate.

“I think that he’s going to get off the ballot soon, I mean, you saw, today, reporting from his ex-political director saying that he lied about all this stuff and concerns that she had, I mean, the issues are just going to keep piling up,” Gottheimer told CNN’s John Berman on “CNN News Central.”

On Monday, The Washington Post published an opinion piece from a former top aide of Platner’s campaign in which she pushed members of her party to consider voting for someone else.

“Democrats are being sold a narrative that Platner is the only choice for the race against Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Maine voters don’t have to accept that,” former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald (D), who was Platner’s political director between August and October 2025, wrote.

“What I would suggest is that Graham Platner get off — if he wins today, which I assume he will, because there’s no one actively campaigning against him — that he get off the ballot and let another Democrat step in, let the Maine Democratic Party put somebody else in,” Gottheimer said in his interview.

Gov. Janet Mills is on the primary ballot, but she suspended her campaign as Platner took a wide lead in polls.

“I mean, if this were in Jersey, and you had a candidate who abused women, obviously, and has a Nazi tattoo that now, it’s clear that he knew it was a Nazi tattoo, not to mention many of his other lies and his comments,” Gottheimer said.

Platner’s campaign has been in choppy waters recently, with Democrats questioning whether he is becoming a liability in a key race for potential Senate control.

Within the last few weeks, he has confronted revelations surrounding sexually explicit messages he sent to women during his marriage, and The New York Times published a story in which several former girlfriends portrayed him in a negative light.

Last Thursday, Platner denied parts of the Times story, suggesting that there could be political motivation behind at least one woman who recounted that he could be physically rough.

In October, Platner said he had covered up a tattoo after he learned of its resemblance to a Nazi symbol. The Democratic candidate said at the time that “it was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol.”

Maine’s primary is Tuesday, and if Platner locks down the Democratic nomination in the state, he will likely face longtime incumbent Collins in November, who has been in office since 1997.

On Tuesday night, Ben Chin, Platner’s campaign manager, said they were “grateful to every Mainer” who made his primary win possible and “helped build this movement.”

“This was not an easy campaign. It was never meant to be. Real change isn’t easy. As Graham says, the system is not broken. It is working exactly the way people like Susan Collins and her billionaire donors designed it to work — to protect their power and shut everyone else up and out,” Chin said in a statement.

Updated at 10:39 p.m. EDT