Platner’s deeply flawed candidacy tests Democrats’ moral compass

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The moral compromise Maine Democratic voters baked into Graham Platner’s nomination for U.S. Senate shocks the sensibilities.

Maine has traditionally been looked upon as a bellwether state. “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” was once an axiom of U.S. politics. But other than that shibboleth, Maine is an inconsequential state in America’s political constellation, with its relatively small population, two seats in the House of Representatives, four electoral votes and a backseat location in the far northeastern U.S.

But this year, with Republicans holding a slender 53-47 Senate majority, as Maine goes so may the Senate.

Often said to be a liberal Republican, five term Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), age 73, is facing the fight of her life. Polls say Mainers are looking for a younger more energetic candidate than the pro-choice Collins, who wears RINO (Republican in name only) drag but always seems to answer to MAGA’s call. Collins voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but later said she had been “misled” about his position on affirming Roe v. Wade.

The apparent frontrunning Democratic challenger was Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D). Mills, if elected, would have been a freshman senator at age 79, the oldest in U.S. history. But who cares about age in politics nowadays, with President Trump at age 80 and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who recruited Mills to run for the Senate, at 75?

Mills trounced Republican Paul Lepage in 2022 for her current job, garnering nearly 56 percent of the votes cast. But what Mills and Schumer didn’t count on was the bearded combat veteran and Sullivan oyster farmer Graham Platner, 41, running in the Democratic primary on a progressive-populist platform. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was quick to endorse Platner, who raised over $3.2 million from grassroots donors in the first seven weeks of his campaign.

Platner’s ultra-left candidacy won instant populist appeal, and Mills proved no match for his remarkable fundraising ability. Polls showed him leading Mills by as much as 66 points. She suspended her candidacy in April.

Then, a succession of damning facts began emerging about Platner. A former girlfriend alleged that he was lying when he claimed he did not know the chest tattoo he had gotten during his military service strongly resembled an official insignia of the Nazi SS. He had once referred to it, she said, as “my Totenkopf” (translated Death’s Head), meaning he knew it was the symbol of the infamous Third SS Panzer Division.

To a traumatized generation, symbols are important. The insignia of the Totenkopf is at least as terrifying to Jews as cross-burning is to Blacks.

So what? The meaning of a tattoo is in the eyes of the beholder. Does the chest tattoo indicate Platner admires Nazi paramilitary troops or is a neo-Nazi? Not if he is a progressive candidate and you are a progressive voter. Does a knuckle tattoo indicate that you are a member of the dangerous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua? Yes, if you are an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official; no, if you are an expert in gangs.

Liberals dismissed the Totenkopf as an indiscretion by a Marine on leave from a combat zone who got drunk and got a tattoo with a skull and crossbones. But there is more.

Platner’s wife had told a campaign aide he had been trading sexual texts with six women, and perhaps as many as a dozen, before the beginning of his political run.

A former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, alleged that he had once “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.” She later described him as “the most toxic literally abusive man on earth.” She said he referred to women as “hatchet wounds,” a vulgar term for female genitalia. Fifield also told the media: “He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them.”

Other women connected to Platner also described strange behavior.

The hypothetical Democrat, revolted at the offensive behavior towards women by Trump or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), should be equally repelled by Platner. Before Trump, there were political guardrails that prevented moral transgressors from, as New York Times columnist Brett Stephens aptly puts it, “degrading our politics and setting a putrescent example of what is — and what isn’t — necessary to reach the high places of American life.”

But star progressives on the left like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have been nonchalant when it comes to the charges against Platner. #BelieveWomen used to be a rallying cry; now it is a mirage. Democrats like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are of a piece with Trump, endorsing politicians for their allegiance not their character.

Ethicists call this a “double standard.” To embrace a double standard is to undercut one’s own moral judgments about politicians. If Platner can carry the day in November, then the differences between him and Trump or Paxton are mainly differences of degree.

Platner has led in nearly every poll against Collins since early March, but only three have been posted since the revelation that he sent sexual text messages to women other than his wife, and just one since the release of a New York Times investigation into his past relationships. The race is now a tossup.

James D. Zirin is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and a published legal analyst.