On October 15, Graham Platner, the 41-year-old military veteran and rural Maine oyster farmer running for U.S. Senate, told The Bulwark that “I don’t have that many” skeletons in his closest. Asked about the fact he is “just not as tested” as the newest entrant to the race, the 77-year-old incumbent Governor Janet Mills, Platner replied, “We’ve been sending up well-tested people for decades, and the country is in worse straits than it’s ever been.”
On October 16, questionable social media posts by Platner began to make their way into the media, in which he victim-blamed rape survivors, asked “why don’t black people tip?”, suggested support for political violence, and dubbed himself a “communist” and a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist.” In a thread titled, “white people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks,” Platner responded, “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are.” One of Platner’s top campaign aides resigned in response. The candidate has since been on an apology tour, characterizing the comments as byproducts of a rough transition into civilian life after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not reflective of who he is today.
When Mills entered the race to be the nominee against the Democratic Party’s white whale—five-term incumbent Senator Susan Collins—concerns about Mills’s age immediately surfaced, although Collins herself will turn 73 later this year. Some Democrats expressed frustration with yet another septuagenarian running for high office—after the calamitous, truncated Joe Biden re-election effort and the painful end of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s career.
Furthermore, Platner had been in the race for two months, earning favorable attention and endorsements from Senator Bernie Sanders as well as big unions thanks to his gruff, blunt charisma, military service, and blue-collar work as an oysterman, and left-leaning politics. Shouldn’t the aging Mills let a fresh face take the spotlight?
The downside of that logic is now plain. A handful of social media rantings is not “that many” skeletons, but they are enough to rattle Platner’s chances.
The former Marine still has defenders, not just regarding his own character, but regarding how we should view unvarnished social media posting in the modern age. Representative Ro Khanna, on X, accused the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of leaking Platner’s social media history to the media, and declared, “I respect Platner’s journey & the man he is today. I reject the politics of personal destruction. I stand by my endorsement.” Ryan Grim of Drop Site News on X, in response to Platner’s disavowal video, argued more broadly, “If being angry as a young man disqualifies you from running for office later as a Democrat, Dems will have basically no men running.”
People of any gender can be and have been intemperate on social media, so I don’t think gender is relevant to whether Democrats should shun candidates with checkered social media histories. But there’s validity to the argument that in the social media era, it’s really easy to have bad moments online that don’t capture an individual’s full character. Besides, there are many people in elective office—including in the Oval Office—who have overcome, or even embraced, offensive posts. So, why assume that voters will find Platner’s past disqualifying?
However, the question runs both ways: Why assume Platner can convince voters his social media past is not indicative of flawed character? Platner isn’t as tested as Mills, not just as a candidate but as a public official.
To Platner’s credit, the resident of tiny Sullivan near Bar Harbor, chairs his town’s planning board and is harbormaster. (Maine has cool government positions!) But if Platner were a state legislator or statewide official, he could more easily tell Maine voters: You know me, you’ve worked with me, you’ve seen my record of accomplishments, and you know these old posts don’t reflect who I am today and how I would serve as your United States Senator.
Being in the statehouse doesn’t make one bulletproof of course. Collins survived her last campaign against Sara Gideon, who was Speaker of the Maine House, thanks to a negative ad campaign full of falsehoods. But without some sort of track record and a relationship with the Maine electorate, a candidate has little ability to defuse questions about character.
So instead of asking the entire state of Maine to roll the dice, Platner should consider competing for the District 12 seat in the Maine House of Representatives.
That seat is currently held by the Republicans’ House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham. Whatever is in Platner’s past can’t compare to Faulkingham’s past criminal convictions for assault and “throwing a bucket of excrement” at people. Presumably defeating a Republican incumbent in rural Maine would be a challenge for Platner, but if he truly has the charisma as a straight-talking Maine veteran and oyster farmer, then let’s see it work on the local level before presuming it’ll work statewide.
Maybe Platner isn’t a racist, misogynistic communist. But that’s not enough to conclude he is prepared to run a U.S. Senate campaign, much less be a United States Senator. Younger Democrats should be moving up the ranks. But going step-by-step still has its merits.
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