Ever since Maine Governor Janet Mills suspended her campaign for U.S. Senate on April 30, Graham Platner, the military veteran and oyster farmer who has consistently led in primary and general election polls, has been described as the presumptive Democratic Party nominee.
But polls aren’t votes. And on June 9, the day of Maine’s primary, Democratic voters deserve to have a say before rolling the dice on a candidate who has been a controversy magnet. It may be that Maine Democrats still want Platner as their nominee, but that should be a choice they make, not a fait accompli foisted upon them.
As Mills is still on the ballot, she can—and should—unsuspend her campaign and give Mainers a real choice.
That’s silly, you might understandably say. Platner’s checkered social media history and covered-up Nazi-themed tattoo have already attracted tons of media coverage. Yet he remains ahead of Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent U.S. senator, in general election polling. The obvious conclusion: Maine voters don’t care. Platner weathered the political storm and is in a strong position to deny Collins a sixth term. Why inject fresh intra-party division now?
That is a reasonable argument, and Maine Democrats should avoid any move that risks a permanent schism. Two weeks from now, Platner likely will be the official nominee, and the party will need to unify around him to maximize its chances of capturing not only Collins’s seat but control of the U.S. Senate. There’s no electoral rationale for Mills or any other prominent Democrat to make damning remarks that will end up in Republican attack ads come autumn, as Representative Jake Auchinloss of Massachusetts just did by going on CNN and declaring, “I find that tattoo and his commentary about it to be personally disqualifying.”
But primary voters have reason to question if Platner can go the distance. That Platner leads Collins by seven points in the lone poll taken since Mills’s suspension is not proof that he will win in November; Maine Democrats learned that the hard way in 2020, when their nominee led every poll from February to October, then lost to Collins by nine points. And as attacks on Platner from Republican entities and conservative media outlets have escalated, including ambushes by camera-wielding conservative journalists, the rookie candidate sometimes lets a prickly side surface.
For example, just before Memorial Day, a Fox News reporter approached Platner in the parking lot of a small grocery store near his Sullivan, Maine home. “I was wondering if you regret the post about the Purple Heart veteran,” said the reporter, “if you think you need to apologize to him, what you would say to voters who might be upset by it?”
The reporter was referring to a post on Reddit in which Platner commented on a viral helmet cam video of Private First Class Ted Daniels getting shot in Afghanistan. “This video never gets old,” scoffed Platner, “Dumb motherfucker didn’t deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban’s part is the only reason this mouthbreather made it home, he managed to make every possible shit decision possible when it comes to small unit combat.”
After initially avoiding eye contact with the Fox News reporter while putting seltzer and soda into his pickup truck, Platner finally took the bait. “I did four tours in the infantry,” he said unapologetically, “Any attempt to say that I disrespect veterans is slanderous and offensive.” When the reporter asked, “Do you think you owe him an apology?” Platner shot back with his own questions: “Do you know how many of my friends have Purple Hearts? Do you know how many of my friends got wounded?” The reporter answered Platner’s question with “I’m sure a lot,” but Platner didn’t reciprocate. He just ended the exchange with, “Yeah, a lot of them. Thank you,” and got in his truck.
Platner is hardly the first candidate to give an off-the-cuff answer to an on-camera ambush before collecting their thoughts. But it’s a mistake nonetheless and one that could have repercussions.
When some of his controversial Reddit posts first attracted media coverage in October, Platner delivered what sounded like a sweeping apology and offered that he has since matured. “I’m sorry for this,” he concluded, “Just know that it’s not reflective at all of who I am. I don’t want you to judge me on the dumbest thing I ever wrote on the internet. I would prefer if people could judge me on the person I am today.”
But Platner never specified which posts he was apologizing for. And in some interviews, he doesn’t sound apologetic at all, as in December when he told The New Yorker Radio Hour, “I made a lot of comments that I’m not ashamed of.”
“Dumb motherfucker didn’t deserve to live,” is a comment about a human being shot in combat that, unquestionably, Platner should be ashamed of. Yet his gut response in a parking lot while on an errand was to try to play a some-of-my-best-friends-are-Purple-Hearts-recipients card and dodge the apology question. That will only invite more questions regarding which comments he is and is not ashamed of.
With five months between the primary and general election, Platner will get those questions and then some, fueled by tens of millions spent on negative ads that cover a wider range of potential vulnerabilities than Mills’s spitball of an ad buy. Over the span of a few weeks, Mills narrowly focused on Platner’s comments that blamed rape victims for being raped. After polls indicated the ads failed to drive a wedge between Platner and Maine’s Democratic women, Mills gave up.
Republicans won’t be so limited by time or topic. In addition to hammering Platner’s past mockery of a wounded vet, Republicans have begun pushing a narrative that Platner’s association with the “working class” is phony because he was educated in private schools and continues to lean on his parents for money. And they are cheekily exploiting a Reddit post in which Platner expressed a fondness for masturbating in portable toilets.
Platner and his allies have adopted a cocksure posture that voters don’t care about any of this. But that’s a big assumption to make before any votes have been cast. Perhaps most worrying is that the cockiness seems to manifest in Platner’s inconsistent tone. He’s humble when he concludes he must be, such as when disability advocates criticized his use of the R-word. Otherwise, he’s dismissive, fueled by the belief that the voters are already on his side and no more humility is required.
A candidate running a little scared—as all candidates should—would expend the mental energy necessary to stick to one strategy. One might argue that Trumpian dismissiveness projects the strength to win elections, whereas chronic sheepishness does not. But that’s not the tack Platner first took, and inconsistency begets questions about sincerity. Even if Platner gets through the primary, as he almost surely will, we can’t know how voters will view Platner in November after five months of relentless attacks.
If Maine Democrats are having second thoughts, they deserve an opportunity to register those second thoughts in the primary. Mills can give them that opportunity.
The governor, 78, need not go scorched-earth. She shouldn’t say anything to preclude her from endorsing Platner after the primary. She need not say anything about Platner at all. She could simply issue a statement reminding voters that she never withdrew from the race in the first place.
Her prior statement read, “While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else—the fight—to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” and in turn, “I am suspending active campaigning.” Mills could issue a statement declaring that, while she still doesn’t have those financial resources, she would serve as the party’s nominee if that is the will of Maine’s Democratic voters. She could organize a few town hall events and maybe even float a debate (though Platner surely would never agree to one).
Another last-ditch move for Mills could be to endorse the other Democrat on the ballot, David Costello, but it wouldn’t have the same potential impact. A longtime government aide who has served in local, state, and federal positions, Costello was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate two years ago. In a listless campaign, Costello lost badly to the incumbent, Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats. And Costello’s campaign this year is even more forgettable. Asking voters to take a flyer on a candidate even less known than Platner undercuts the argument. The queasiness some have with Platner comes not only from known red flags but also from those that might pop up after the primary. Backing an even lesser-known candidate wouldn’t make much sense.
So, Mills should remind voters that she’s still on the ballot. With little money and less time, she would probably still lose. As the only Democrat elected statewide in Maine in 20 years, I doubt she wants to cap her long political career with the humiliation of an electoral drubbing. But reminding the electorate that she never left the ring isn’t about her. It would be about making sure voters get to choose who would be best suited to take on the formidable Collins: a rough-hewn, freewheeling outsider or a cautious two-term governor. If Maine Democrats want to take a gamble, let them be the ones who put their chips on the table.
