Graham Platner Is Not Going to Be Senator

Bad choices sometimes have consequences

Image credit: MAINEiac4434, CC

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post in which I argued that, while I found Graham Platner an appealing candidate for Senate in Maine, his lack of experience made me cautious.

“Platner looks good on paper, and he may actually be good,” I said. “But if there are some land mines in his background—if he’s said or done things that might harm him in a political campaign—we really wouldn’t know.” Governor Janet Mills had just entered the campaign, and that, I said, was a good thing. When you have a virtual unknown running for office, you want a vigorous primary to unearth any downsides before you get into the general.

Well, as it turns out Platner does in fact have a bunch of land mines in his background. Over the last week the press got its hands on a bunch of deleted racist and sexist social media posts. Then, today, a video leaked showing that Platner has what appears to be a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo on his chest.

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Platner apologized for the social media posts, saying he repudiates his past views, and saying that his service in the marines left him bitter and despairing, and that he’s in a better place now. In regards to his tattoo, he said that he’s “not a secret Nazi”.

Platner’s apology sounds heartfelt, and it is certainly possible for people to get tattoos without fully understanding their meaning. Platner’s been outspokenly antifascist; I can believe that he didn’t know what he was doing and is only now recognizing how he fucked up. (Though he does seems to have known the tattoo was a problem for at least a little while.)

Defenders of Platner have made all the arguments you’d expect. They’ve said that the left is too wedded to purity politics; they’ve argued that negative information about Platner is being leaked by Democratic establishment operatives (as if the GOP wouldn’t do the same in a general); they insist that people need to be allowed to change.

I agree that people should be allowed to change. Platner seems to have held some ugly views in the past, and to have been in some networks where fascist tattoos were normalized. I appreciate that he’s altered his views, and that he’s trying to move to a better place. I don’t bear him any animosity; I think there are a lot of ways he could continue to work on being a better person and on making America a better place.

But…he needs to drop out of the Senate race.

There’s a big difference between “Graham Platner deserves space to be a better person” and “Graham Platner deserves to be the next Democratic candidate for Maine Senate.” The Maine Senate race is an extremely important, high=profile contest; Susan Collins, the incumbent Republican, is a formidable candidate. If she wins, Democrats have no chance to retake the Senate.

This is a major, crucial fight with sweeping implications for Maine and for the country. It’s not a place for untested candidates to work out their redemption arcs.

You can’t ask marginalized people—Black people, LGBT people, Jews, women—to vote for a guy with a history of saying ugly shit and with a literal Nazi tattoo on his chest. Nor can you expect Susan Collins to ignore these glaring weaknesses in her election opponent. If Platner were to win the primary, Collins would talk about that Nazi tattoo every day in a (probably successful) effort to drive down D turnout.

More, we still don’t know what else is out there in Platner’s past. After the social media posts dropped, Platner said the worst was behind him. He either did not realize that the Nazi tattoo was a liability, or he was lying. Either way, how can you trust him? How can he continue to ask people for money? How can he assure voters that he’s the best person to fight Collins when we don’t know what revelations about his character or his decision-making will come out tomorrow?

No candidate is perfect; Janet Mills has some real downsides. She’s 77, and probably can’t serve more than one term in the Senate. She’s said she supports the filibuster—which is death for a lot of vital reforms needed to fight fascism. These are reasonable things to criticize, and I can see why some progressives are ambivalent about her at best.

But…Mills has been in Maine politics for years. We know she does not have a Nazi tattoo. We know she does not have a history of ugly social media posts. We know that in office she defied Trump to stand by trans athletes—a stance that I find very admirable, and which speaks to her character, imo.

There are other candidates in the primary as well; perhaps one of them will turn out to be stronger than Mills. Platner, though, needs to drop out. Not because he’s impure, not because he’s a Nazi, but because he’s demonstrated he’s not ready for this campaign.

People can change; people can do better. But sometimes you make bad choices in life that close down certain future paths. When Graham Platner got a Nazi tattoo, he didn’t doom himself to being a Nazi forever; when he said sexist and racist shit, he didn’t nail himself to sexism and racism for all time. But when he did those things, he did disqualify himself as a candidate for Maine Senate. If Platner wants to repudiate Nazism, the best thing he can do right now is steps aside, and lend his support to whichever candidate the Democrats choose to challenge Susan Collins, the representative of the fascist party in Maine.