Graham Platner’s most vocal supporters are doubling down. There was a moment earlier this week — after Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced her candidacy for Senate; after a tranche of old Reddit posts triggered debate over Platner’s views on everything from gun rights to racial stereotypes; and, most crucially, after video emerged of him dancing in his underwear and showing off the solid dark Nazi Totenkopf tattoo on his chest — when it looked like the populist, oyster-shucking, anti-genocide veteran’s attempt to take down Republican Sen. Susan Collins would be over before it had really even started.
Then new polling dropped, and it wasn’t. Even after the blowup over his tattoo and history of Reddit posts, Platner is leagues ahead of Mills, who was already a member of the Maine House of Representatives when Platner, drunk, 23, and on shore leave from the Marines, stumbled into a tattoo shop in Croatia and got an inked symbol whose significance, by his telling, he didn’t grasp for the next 18 years. (Amid a torrent of news this week, he got it covered up.)
Evaluations of Platner’s political viability have raised a bigger question for Democrats looking to capture the kind of energy he’s drawn among voters in Maine. If the problem is that Democrats are too polished, too pro-corporate, and too catered to the elite, the solution just might be the rugged outsider, the edgy everyman — perhaps, even, the provocateur. And if the surge in support Platner saw in the wake of the scandal suggests anything, it’s that voters are so sick of what the Democratic establishment has to offer, they might look past a Nazi tattoo.
But for those on the left who find themselves desperate for a disruption of the party’s uninspiring baseline, it raises the question: Is this the best they can do?
Platner isn’t the first of this style of brash, populist, mixed-bag of a candidate to try to woo the left in recent years. Sen. John Fetterman, several of whose ex-staffers have joined Platner’s team, was once heralded with similar optimism. The bald, gruff giant who wore shorts to the Capitol was at one point in time lauded as the model for the party’s future. Today, he’s one of the least popular Democrats in the Senate — among both voters and staffers leaving his office at a high clip. He’s amassed Republican donors since leaning hard into his pro-Israel tack since October 7. And he’s repeatedly voted against the majority of his party to work hand in hand with President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress.
On some of the left’s key policy issues, the two are almost diametrically opposed. What Fetterman once lacked in substance, Platner makes up for in having experience as a local activist and clear policy stances on issues from Medicare for All to the genocide in Gaza. Fetterman, who once skated by heavier scrutiny of his stance on Israel, has since closely aligned himself with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the nation’s leading pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Platner’s history as a contractor for a company previously known as Blackwater is one detail several critics have pointed to as the place where the pro-populist base might have ordinarily drawn the line if it weren’t for Platner’s staunch anti-imperial and anti-genocide stance.
“Take a look at our policy platform,” said a spokesperson for the Platner campaign, objecting to comparisons to Fetterman. “Watch Graham speak on the stump. There’s a lot of substance. He takes questions across the state and listens to people’s hopes, fears, dreams, aspirations and questions, and gives them answers that are stuck in real time, not to mention an expansive policy platform online.”
While the similarities may reside in their aesthetics, that becomes significant when Democrats use those aesthetics to imbue authority, said Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something, which recruits and backs candidates to run for state and local office with the aim to build a bench for national races like the one in Maine.
“Who gets permission to be seen as authentic? And who gets permission to be a little unkempt?”
“That is something really interesting — who is deemed authentic and who can credibly speak as a voice of the people. This particular type of brawly white dude with tattoos who can speak the visual language of what we associate with the working class,” Litman said. “This is really a moment for us to collectively gut check — who gets permission to be seen as authentic? And who gets permission to be a little unkempt?”
That’s no reason to tear Platner down, Litman added.
“Here is a candidate who has very clearly excited part of the electorate that we want to reach,” Litman said. “To take glee in tearing him down as opposed to curiosity about what we can learn from that and bring to our candidate of choice, is why we lose.”
Though they wield it to divergent ends, Platner and Fetterman have both embraced a strategy of leaning into the criticism online. In Fetterman’s case, that has meant sharing increasingly bloodthirsty posts supporting Israel throughout its genocide on Gaza, while staff and constituents defect and implore him to stop.
Platner — who has apologized for both the tattoo and the posts — has shared other old posts “from the Reddit files,” as Platner has described them, and reshared them as evidence of his conviction on other issues, from misogyny and homophobia in the Marines to veterans’ mental health.
“Something I’m proud of from my internet history? I spent a lot of time online encouraging other veterans to also get help through the VA,” Platner’s campaign posted to his Facebook page on Sunday. “Because I knew even then that it was literally saving my life. Being honest and vulnerable helps others start down the same path.”
Though Platner is feeling the love now, there are months to go before Maine’s ranked-choice Democratic primary in June — and over a year until the party’s nominee would face off against Susan Collins.
The field is crowded with 12 other candidates, but the race is still largely seen as a contest between Platner and Mills over the path voters will choose for the future of the Democratic Party, and whether that choice will be enough to upset Collins, a three-decade incumbent.
“I’m convinced because the people in Maine are convinced. After all this went down we had 500 people at a capacity town hall. We had 100 people outside waiting to hear him speak,” said the Platner campaign spokesperson. “I’m convinced, because we continue to hold town halls across the state that are at capacity in rural areas, in bigger cities, in smaller towns.”
Much of the coverage of the race has framed it as one of the many upcoming litmus tests on how Democrats handle a base that is largely rejecting its pro-Israel stance. While Platner has staked out the position as the candidate most critical of that status quo, Mills, a 77-year-old veteran of the Democratic establishment, has made pro-Israel statements but has not yet discussed how her campaign would approach the issue.
Last year, Mills’s campaign manager Chelsea Brossard took a trip to Israel funded by AIPAC’s educational wing. Brossard previously managed the failed gubernatorial campaign of AIPAC ally Rep. Josh Gottheimer in New Jersey and also worked as his chief of staff.
The Mills campaign did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.
Platner’s supporters are betting that voters’ growing frustration with Democrats over both the party’s historic unconditional support for Israel amid the genocide in Gaza and its deference to establishment picks over outsiders who have nonetheless energized the base will outweigh any concerns about his recent campaign revelations. Platner has raised $3 million so far, spoken to crowds of thousands of people at rallies around Maine, and earned the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — whose support didn’t appear to waver after the tattoo scandal, either.
The spokesperson said Platner’s image isn’t necessarily the model Democrats should seek in every race. “The Democratic Party should be running candidates to appeal to a broad, broad swath of the electorate in their home state, or in their district, or whatever they may look like,” they said. “There’s not a one-size-fits-all rule book.”
First Appeared on
Source link
