Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is having a rough couple of days.
Barely two months ago, little-known Senate candidate Graham Platner announced his bid to unseat Republican Susan Collins and was immediately celebrated by the New York Times with a largely-glowing profile. But in recent days, other big mainstream media institutions have turned their attention to Platner and found all manner of controversial past statements, starting with CNN:
Graham Platner, a Marine veteran turned oyster farmer who is now a rising Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, once called himself a “communist,” dismissed “all” police as bastards, and said rural White Americans “actually are” racist and stupid, according to deleted social media posts reviewed by CNN’s KFile.
In one now-deleted Reddit comment from 2021, Platner responded to a thread about people becoming more conservative as they age by saying: “I got older and became a communist.” The comment was made on a subreddit called r/Antiwork, a far-left forum “for those who want to end work.”
The defense from Platner is that, “I don’t think any of that is indicative of who I am today, really.” He insists that he is not a communist.
The posts are from 2021, a whole five years ago. Platner was 37 at the time.
Graham Platner, who is running as an insurgent Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, once suggested in online posts that violence is a necessary means to achieving social change — comments now drawing scrutiny in an era of increased political violence.
If people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history,” he wrote in one since-deleted post. In another, he said that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.”
This is exactly the kind of move you make if you want to win the endorsement of Virginia Democratic state attorney general candidate Jay Jones. When Platner is described as an “insurgent” candidate, maybe we need to ask for what kind of insurgency he envisions.
Meanwhile, in the Washington Post:
Graham Platner (D), a U.S. Senate candidate from Maine, responded dismissively to a cartoon about sexual assault in the military and downplayed the challenges service members face in reporting sexual assault in unearthed Reddit posts from 2013.
“In today’s current climate, when every whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a feature length film, anyone who actually thinks the military is purposefully covering up rape to save the career of some god damn [captain], is clearly both an idiot and junior enough in rank or life experience to think it matters,” he wrote on Reddit about sexual assault in the military.
And in the Maine Monitor:
Platner responded to a 2013 post on Reddit entitled “What is one question you have always wanted to ask someone of another race,” writing, “Why don’t black people tip?” He worked as a bartender at Tune Inn on Capitol Hill, where he was a guest bartender last month.
“I work as a bartender and it always amazes me how solid this stereotype is,” he wrote. “Every now and again a black patron will leave a 15-20 percent tip, but usually it [is] between 0-5 percent. There’s got to be a reason behind it, what is it?”
Now, if Democrats want to argue that obnoxious, hateful, or incendiary comments in an online forum are not the sort of thing that should be held against someone later in life, they can do that, but they probably ought to begin with, “we agree with Vice President JD Vance.” If it seems ridiculous to argue that men in their mid-20s aren’t responsible for what they write and say, it is even more absurd to say the same about a man in his mid-to-late 30s.
Somewhere in Maine, there are probably some Democrats fuming that big mainstream media institutions are putting such scrutiny on Platner now, metaphorically kicking his campaign in the crotch before the Senate primary really begins.
The thing is, Platner doesn’t have a record as a state legislator, town councilman, mayor, or other office. He has no bills he’s introduced, no legislation he’s shepherded to passage, no amendments offered. (He’s a little shaky on legislative details of the U.S. Senate, erroneously calling the Big Beautiful Bill an appropriations bill.)
He’s been the harbormaster of Sullivan, Maine. That job is appointed by the Sullivan board of selectmen. I suppose someone could do a deep dive into how Platner enforced mooring regulations, parking rules and noise ordinances during his time as harbormaster, but I’m not sure that’s all that illustrative of how he would serve Maine as a senator.
In other words, these comments on Reddit are his political record.