Graham Platner, running for U.S. Senate, was recruited by Washington’s coziest insider progressive networking politicos.
A mere five days ago — after the latest round of scandals facing presumptive Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who hopes to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins in Maine — I posed a simple question: “What Other Skeletons Are Lurking in Graham Platner’s Closet?” Now we know quite a bit more about a man whose public profile seems to have been assembled around the overturned building blocks of a failed and profoundly selfishly lived life.
Yes, we’d already discussed so very much, primarily the fact that every single biographical point in Platner’s political narrative — as sold to Mainers — was an upper-class, downwardly mobile fraud, as phony as Jasmine Crockett ever was. The man is a privileged failson of Maine Democratic elites with a biography nearly entirely fraudulent. (He claimed to be a reluctant Marine war veteran; he in fact volunteered out of a frankly stated desire to “kill people.” He claimed to be a hardscrabble oysterman; he in fact claims a 100 percent disability status in order to live on a government pension while selling his hobbyist haul to his restaurant-owning mother.)
In short, he gave every indication of a man in a hurry to slough off his past life in favor of a newer, more glamorous one. As a cynical partisan in my own way, I begged Maine Democrats to step into a bear-trap by nominating him to face Collins. We’ll see if he makes it to next Tuesday, much less the July replacement date! But we have learned so much more over the past 24 hours. It turns out that Platner, perfectly in keeping with his long-exhibited pattern of behavior, is an insider whelp of privilege coasting on family money while working in Washington, D.C., as a bartender to the political stars of the progressive future: the staffers and lobbyists who stock the upscale/downscale Tune Inn bar southeast of Capitol Hill. Why are you hearing about Platner now? Because he was recruited by all of Washington’s coziest insider progressive networking politicos for this job. Platner is, quite literally, a Washington progressive-activist “op.”
And, as is true of the vast majority of the men in this field, Platner is also (altogether too predictably) a woman-loathing creep, at least if you trust the New York Times:
Lyndsey Fifield, 40, a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns, recalled him as “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness.’” Ms. Fifield, who dated Mr. Platner from roughly 2013 to 2015, said that his offensive online posts “reminded me of just how much he hated women.”
Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, who said she dated him casually off and on between 2019 and 2021, said the posts deepened her belief that he did not respect women. “When I saw the old comments that he made online,” she said, “I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.”
Some of the women also raised questions about his trustworthiness. Mr. Platner’s insistence that he did not know that his tattoo was a Nazi symbol until it became a campaign issue last fall was simply not true, Ms. Fifield said. After all, she said, he had taught her the word for it years earlier, referring to it as “my Totenkopf.”
If you grew up in D.C. politics, you already know: Platner conforms to a wannabe type (both male and female) we’ve all encountered. There is vastly worse in the story, of course: Platner had a tendency to behave as a thuggishly intimidating “alpha chud” with his girlfriends, particularly when drunk (which he frequently was). He may want the world to believe his story that this is merely who he was a decade ago, during a “dark time” — that is currently the company line. But then how do you explain that he was caught cheating on his wife — by his wife, no less — with at least six women online in the spring of last year? (Answer: you cannot.)
The reason I guessed correctly what was in Platner’s oppo file — and it was only a guess — is because of life experience, including observing the scene in progressive D.C. bars, where I lurked for over a half-decade.
I can only wonder what other chapters will emerge in the mysterious story of the Mainechurian Candidate.