Marine veteran Graham Platner was nominated by Maine Democrats on Tuesday to face Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s midterm elections.
Although Platner’s 72% victory was a landslide among Democratic voters, nearly 1 in 5 voters still picked Janet Mills, the current governor of Maine, who had stopped campaigning in April after struggling to raise enough funds.
Given the scandals that have plagued Platner, the 41-year-old oyster farmer, some have wondered: Is his victory emblematic of a larger willingness among Democrats to overlook ethical questions among their nominees, much like they’ve criticized Republicans for doing over the last decade?
In his victory speech Tuesday evening to a euphoric crowd, Platner sounded a little like President Donald Trump in his critique of establishment media and politicians, who he claimed “keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by.”
“This is a movement about us,” he said, a framing one columnist suggested “had a whiff of Trump’s timeworn refrain, ‘In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you.’”
Platner has been called “the most toxic literally abusive man on earth,” by a former romantic partner, who alleged Platner was physically aggressive toward her, leaving bruises in one case.
Platner also had a Nazi-related tattoo on his chest, which he recently covered up.
Yet he also said this week: “Every day I wake up and I try to be a little bit better and a little bit kinder than I was the day before.”
And, “If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change.”
Is too much being made of Platner’s victory, or are there legitimate issues raised by his unexpected rise?
Here are three takes from national political observers.
David Smith, The Guardian
In a Guardian analysis of Platner’s victory, “Is he Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump?” correspondent David Smith channeled anxieties among members of the Democratic establishment who are asking, “Shouldn’t the party of #MeToo, so quick to ‘believe women’ and condemn Donald Trump, apply the same standard to Platner?”
Platner voters, Smith suggested, are showing that Michelle Obama’s 2016 message “when they go low, we go high” has “been mugged by the reality of the past decade” — signaling that “Democrats are hungry for fighters to beat Republicans at their own game and, if that means fighting dirty, so be it.”
“‘The days of weak, apologetic Dems are over. Our Tea Party is here,’” he quoted progressive pundit Kyle Kulinski telling Politico.
Platner is “an echo of both Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders,” Smith argued, later calling this decidedly anti-Trump candidate “also a mini-Trump.”
“The more that Washington Democrats condemn him from fancy TV studios, the more that working people in Maine may well rally around him. And like Trump, allegations about his personal life are quickly dismissed as evidence of a powerful elite conspiring to bring down the anti-politician.”
Smith noted how Platner also touts himself as pushing back on a corrupt elite and “the Epstein class.” While supporters suggest “Democrats should stop making the perfect the enemy of the good,” he highlighted worry among opponents that in a general election, “even minor erosion among women, Jewish voters or independents could be enough to save Collins.”
This is in an election that could decide the control of the U.S. Senate. Yet Smith said, “it is too late to play safe now. Democrats have rolled the dice.”
Philip Elliott, Time magazine
Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent for Time magazine, compared the Maine result to a moment in Georgia four years ago when “Democrats were falling over themselves in delight” after Republicans in Georgia had nominated Herschel Walker, despite accusations of stalking and domestic violence.
“Maine Democrats on Tuesday nominated their own version of Walker in Graham Platner,” Elliott claimed, working through various accusations made against the Maine candidate, including abusive behavior against former partners and sexting with women other than his wife.
“Boy, if this isn’t a potential self-own, I don’t know what is,” the Time correspondent said. Describing his own conversations around Washington, Elliott described a somber mood among Democrats, who he said “feel handcuffed to an untested candidate, one who they wish would step aside for the good of the party.”
“Maine is about to engage in an expensive experiment to answer several thorny questions,” he said — beginning with this primary one: “What are voters willing to overlook?”
While Democrats may be “desperately hoping there aren’t more Platner revelations left to come out before Election Day,” Elliott suggested that Republicans are “whispering that Democrats’ fears of unused Platner (opposition research) are well-founded” and “hinting that, when it comes to Platner, there’s more than one shoe left to drop.”
Bret Stephens, The New York Times
Writing on the verge of the primary election, columnist Bret Stephens acknowledged that lasting lessons from the Platner candidacy were unclear. But he argued that “inconsistent standards selectively applied according to our political bias” is one concern that should be shared across the political spectrum.
The columnist described particular dismay at watching “some of the same progressives who thought that Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged misbehavior as a teenager and a college student made him unfit for the Supreme Court suddenly become dismissive of the allegations against Platner.”
For instance, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who he said “once thundered” over Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook, has responded to serious allegations against Platner by saying, “seems like a lot of nothing.”
“The term for this is ‘double standard,’” Stephens said, which “merely fuels the pervasive national cynicism about any moral judgments made about any political leader.”
“If Platner can pass muster among Democratic primary voters, then the differences between him and Donald Trump are mainly of degree, not of kind,” he continued. “What you can no longer do, at least not with any intellectual integrity, is to use moral litmus tests to try to disqualify political figures from the opposing party.”
The alternative, Stephens said, is this: “Democrats can operate according to the standards they have set, the ones they’ve sought to apply to Trump.
“They can live by the view that no election is so important that they’re willing to discard the things they once fervently claimed to believe in order to win it.
“They can hold themselves accountable so that they can more credibly and effectively hold their opponents accountable.
“They can cherish the idea that what counts in politics is more than just a relentless quest for a majority, and for power, and that staying true to principle isn’t just a game for suckers.”
