Some Democrats have expressed concerns about Graham Platner’s past. But his win Tuesday night has them warily accepting him as their U.S. Senate nominee in Maine.
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When Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) put out a joint statement on Democrat Graham Platner’s win in Maine on Tuesday night, it was 80 words into the 89-word message before they mentioned the controversial Senate candidate by name.
The statement, issued by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, offered no words of praise for Planter, only a prediction that Maine voters “will elect Graham Platner” over Sen. Susan Collins (R), helping Democrats to retake the Senate majority.
The tone of the statement highlights how national Democratic leaders, many of whom long harbored concerns about Platner’s candidacy as he faces media reports about his checkered past, are grudgingly accepting that he will be their nominee in a must-win Senate race — even as Republicans start to use Platner as a cudgel against Democrats running nationwide.
Gillibrand, who chairs the DSCC, the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, declined to comment on Platner’s victory when asked by reporters on Wednesday.
“We are going to win Maine, and we are going to flip the Senate,” she said as she got into an elevator, echoing earlier comments.
Sen. Peter Welch (Vermont), who was among the Democratic senators who met with Platner last week to discuss his controversies, said Maine voters’ views of Platner matter more than what Democrats in Washington might think.
“He’s got a lot of controversy around him, but that’s been out there,” Welch said. “The Democratic voters in Maine were fully aware of it, and they gave him a very solid Democratic victory in the primary.”
Platner struck a notably outsider tone in his acceptance speech Tuesday night in Blue Hill, Maine, where he argued that “the political establishment … keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that can define the campaign by.”
It was a veiled reference to the spate of stories about his relationships with women, including claims that he sent sexually explicit text messages to women while married and had volatile relationships with women he dated before that.
Platner has responded to many of the allegations by attributing his behavior to poor mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder after his military service. He also denied recent allegations from an ex-girlfriend that he was physically intimidating, pointing to her past in GOP politics to question her credibility.
Platner went on offense against Collins in his speech Tuesday night, hoping to make the race a referendum on her five terms in office and her ties to President Donald Trump, rather than on his personal foibles.
“The story of this campaign is not about how the political establishment counted me out,” Platner said. “It is about how, for far too long, the political establishment has counted out the voices of every single person without the money to buy influence.”
Platner leaned into that message Wednesday when his campaign began airing its first ad of the general election, a spot that focuses on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to both Democrats and Republicans.
“It seems the only thing the party establishments can agree on is a love of Jeffrey Epstein and a hatred of me,” Platner says in the spot.
Two of the handful of Democratic senators who endorsed Platner during the primary race cheered his win and urged others to get on board.
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“He won a landslide victory last night,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), an early endorser, told reporters Wednesday. “He is the Democratic nominee. Last I heard, Democrats want to gain control of the United States Senate. The seat in Maine is going to be pivotal to that effort. I would hope that any Democrat with common sense would be strongly supporting Platner.”
Another Democrat who endorsed Platner during the primary, Sen. Ruben Gallego (Arizona), said the race would be driven by Maine voters’ frustrations with the status quo.
“They’re going to take that out on the party in power, and the party in power is Donald Trump and Susan Collins,” Gallego said.
There were quiet hopes among some leading Democrats in Washington and Maine that the stories would halt Platner’s rise, but those ended Tuesday when he won an overwhelming victory. Nineteen percent of primary voters backed Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), whom Schumer recruited to run for Senate but who ended her campaign in April as polls showed she was badly trailing Platner.
“What last night made clear is that Democrats are very motivated to defeat Susan Collins,” said Emily Cain, a longtime Mills supporter and former state senator. “Graham Platner’s challenge — and opportunity — now is to get the voters who didn’t support him on Tuesday and a majority of the independents who will vote in November.”
The Platner-lite statement from Schumer and Gillibrand also stood out when compared with the way the duo lavished praise on another Democratic Senate nominee.
When state Rep. Josh Turek won his primary in Iowa last week, Schumer and Gillibrand lauded him as a Paralympic hero who “has built a reputation in the legislature for working across the aisle to get things done for Iowans.” When former governor Roy Cooper was victorious in his Senate primary, they praised him as “a champion for North Carolina families.” And when former senator Sherrod Brown won his primary in Ohio, they called him “a trusted leader for Ohio families.”
Republicans have been eager to try to tie Platner to all Democrats. Trump, speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Wednesday, labeled Platner “a thug” and said Democrats are “trying to make excuses for him.”
Rep. John James, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, used Platner on Wednesday to hammer Democrats. “This is what the Democratic Party has become,” James said on Fox Business.
And a memo to top Republicans from the National Republican Senatorial Committee noted that Democrats are “not treating [Platner] as disposable” and are “consolidating” around him, giving their party a chance to “define Platner” now and cast him as a symbol of the broader Democratic Party.
Republicans are not without their own controversial candidates.
Ken Paxton won the party’s Senate nomination in Texas in May, despite having been impeached by the Republican-controlled state House on multiple charges of abuse of office. He had been dogged by other controversies as well, including senior staffers in his office reporting him to the FBI for allegedly using his position to help a prominent donor, and his wife filing for divorce last year on “biblical grounds,” citing adultery.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) sought to distinguish Paxton from Platner in an interview with CNBC this week, citing the revelation that Platner had a skull-and-crossbones tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol. Platner has said he did not know the tattoo had any Nazi connections.
“A misogynist Nazi — if that’s what the Democrat Party in this country wants to endorse and subscribe to, they’ve got a candidate for that,” Thune said.
Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-Louisiana) took to the Senate floor Tuesday to accuse Schumer of “taking his orders from the Graham Platner wing of the Democratic Party.”
“Clearly, the Graham Platner wing of the Democratic Party is in control,” Kennedy said. “And many members of Democratic leadership are scared to death of them, and they are going to do what the Graham Platner wing of the party wants.”
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