If so, Maine Democrats have a week to change their minds. It might help if their party leaders acknowledged the obvious first, which is that they all lined up to endorse a pig in a poke over a popular two-term governor because the party has a man problem. Heavy emphasis on pig, apparently.
Graham Platner will meet with Democratic leadership and donors in DC today, hoping to lock down the primary next week and prepare for a hard fight against Susan Collins in November. According to Politico, Platner will get a chillier reception than he might have imagined a month ago, thanks to all sorts of revelations from Platner's past. Platner hasn't lost any significant endorsements yet, but Democrats are getting very nervous about their toxic-masculinity poster child of the midterm cycle:
Platner is all but certain to be Democrats’ Senate nominee to face Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)after next week’s primary, with Gov. Janet Mills having suspended her campaign in April. But the litany of potentially damaging stories keeps growing, with new reporting over the weekend that Platner exchanged sexual text messages with other women while he was married.
The revelation, which follows scandals related to his offensive old Reddit posts and his tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, are leading some Democrats to question whether Platner undermines their credibility in going after Republicans on issues of moral character. Even as Democratic senators publicly defend him, strategists worry whether Platner will be able to keep withstanding the ongoing drip of revelations about his controversial past — and about what might come out next.
Yes, indeed. Chatter has already emerged that a bigger story could break this week on Platner and his past, although the chatter is too ambiguous at the moment to be credited as anything other than gossip. If it turns out to be accurate, though, a number of leading Democrats who endorsed Platner and defended him through all of these revelations may end up looking like Wile E. Coyote after using an Acme explosive device.
Wanna bet Politico has heard these same rumors and thinks something else is coming down the pike? I doubt that reference to "what might come out next" was merely a rhetorical flourish.
Some unnamed sources tell Politico that they worry about the impact that Platner may have on other races. Democrats used Todd Akin to demonize Republicans across the country in 2012, and Republicans should already be preparing a similar strategy around Platner. Politico gets one Senate Democrat to go on the record with a vote of confidence in Platner, but ...
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who had also endorsed Platner over Mills after some of his earlier scandals surfaced, defended the Maine oysterman’s experience as “very real.”
“He’s talked about it, you know. He’s talked to his wife about it,” Gallego said. “The voters of Maine are going to decide what they’re going to do, but we know that at this point this man can still win the race. And as long as he continues, I think we’ll all be there.”
Hoo boy. So Eric Swalwell's wingman is vouching for the integrity of a Nazi-tatted socialist, eh? Gallego literally lived with Swalwell during the period when Eric the Pred was leading "a double life" that Gallego insists he never saw. And now Gallego wants to do a Chip Diller act on Platner? That should make everyone feel sooooo much better about Platner's past.
What Gallego told Axios is arguably worse. He doesn't actually care about these allegations, as long as Platner can win:
"We know that at this point this man can still win the race, and as long as he continues, I think we'll all be there," Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said.
Ah yes, standards. That's why Gallego never blew the whistle on Eric the Pred, too. Swalwell kept winning elections, so #YOLO or #FOMO or #DGAF, or something.
Other Democrats don't sound nearly as sanguine about embracing a Nazi-tatted socialist with sexting scandals and an active Kik account:
Platner will have an opportunity to address senators' concerns during a meeting with Senate Democrats tomorrow afternoon, followed by two fundraisers, as Axios scooped today.
- "I'll know more after tomorrow's briefing on that," Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said. "But clearly, campaigns and candidates have to be fully transparent as things come out."
- "He has to answer those questions directly and forthrightly. They're fair questions," Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said. "It's going to be on him to answer them, and it's going to be up to the voters of Maine to decide."
They may already be deciding. Portland Press Herald columnist Steve Collins warned that the new poster boy for toxic masculinity has already begun to turn off the key demo for Maine Democrats:
Darcy Halvorsen of South Portland is a good example of somebody who has lost the faith.
“For the last couple of months, I have been a Platner fan and defender, to some extent,” she told me Sunday. “Today, I am really disappointed and disgusted by his non-answers on a range of questions, including stories alleging he sent sexually explicit messages to women after his marriage.
“Voters deserve better,” Halvorsen said. “Maine deserves better.”
She’s not alone. Social media is chock full of Maine women who say they’re no longer buying what Platner’s selling.
One of my friends, who doesn’t want her name used because she’s seen the consequences of speaking out, said that while she liked Platner’s commercials and what he had to say, she felt in her gut that “something was not right and I was not comfortable. I think I now know why. I will not be voting for him.”
That tends to happen when women find out their party's nominee-to-be used to write that sexual assault victims should "take some responsibility for themselves" to avoid rape, and to "act like an adult for f***'s sake." And this stunning argument probably has women thinking twice about Platner:
“Rape is a real thing,” he wrote. “If you’re so worried about it to buy Kevlar underwear you’d think you might not get blacked out f----d up around people you aren’t comfortable with.”
The question for Democrats cozying up to their Nazi-tatted protegé today isn't whether Platner can get elected. It's why they made him a candidate in the first place, and why they're giving him the time of day at all now. They still have another option, after all:
👀 As fallout continues over Graham Platner's sexually explicit texts, Janet Mills is reminding folks she's still on the ballot:
— Mychael Schnell (@mychaelschnell) June 1, 2026
“People have the impression that I ‘withdrew’ or ‘dropped out,'” Mills (D) told @PressHerald, “but I simply suspended active campaigning. I am still…
Maine voters have another week to do the right thing, because Democrats in DC clearly don't have the integrity to do it themselves.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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