Platner puts Democrats through a political stress test

Graham Platner is putting the Democratic Party’s interest in younger, fresher candidates through a serious stress test.

Platner’s posting history on Reddit roiled his Senate campaign last week, just as popular Maine Gov. Janet Mills joined him in the Democratic primary. Reporters combed through years of the Marine veteran turned oyster farmer’s posts that called cops “bastards,” urged women worried about rape to “take responsibility,” and asked why Black customers “don’t tip.”

His political director quit the two-month-old campaign, and the candidate apologized — but now Platner is taking a rare, risky approach by leaning into the controversy. The 41-year-old argued to Semafor that his party shouldn’t make an example of him while trying to court the votes of men who may have also said things they regret.

“How do you expect to win young people?” Platner asked Semafor on Tuesday. “How do you expect to win back men when you go back through somebody’s Reddit history and just pull it all out and say: ‘Oh my God, this person has no right to ever be in politics?’ Good luck with that. Good luck winning over those demographics.”

Platner’s highest-profile supporter, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is sticking with him, even as a new controversy emerged in the form of a tattoo that resembles Nazi iconography. His campaign told Semafor that it had $400,000 in monthly recurring donations, with no decline since CNN reported the first Reddit story.

But even some of his supporters acknowledge that Platner’s online posting should not be the model for Democrats’ future.

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., told Semafor on Tuesday he still supports Platner, though he also warned potential future candidates to not “spend a lot of time on Reddit” and distanced himself from some of Platner’s statements.

“Do I like any of it? Of course not. Do I like what he’s campaigning on and the way he’s connecting to working-class voters? That’s the piece that’s been missing from our party,” Heinrich said.

“The Democratic Party needs to be big enough to accept people who have hard lives, who have made mistakes and have actually owned up to those mistakes. And that’s what he’s done,” said Heinrich, who directed money from his leadership PAC to Platner.

On Monday, Platner began sharing old Reddit posts that he stood by, attempting to draw a more nuanced picture of a “retired sh*tposter” who didn’t think he’d ever run for office. He’ll hold a town hall outside Portland on Wednesday.

“If we want to put internet comments into the middle of the conversation,” Platner said, “I think it’s only fair that we point out the good ones, too.”

Yet part of that rollout also came back to bite him, in the form of a tattoo that he told the progressive Pod Save America hosts he got while “very inebriated” on leave from the military.

Platner’s team gave the show’s producers a video they expected to become a problem: the future candidate, shirtless, singing at his brother’s wedding reception, revealing the skull inked on his chest.

The tattoo resembles an image linked to Nazism, a connection Platner said he was unaware of; he added that it didn’t raise alarms during his screenings for military service or a security clearance.

“We got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo,” Platner said, explaining that he got inked with fellow Marines in Croatia. “I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I’ve not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years.”

His former political director saw it differently, posting on Facebook: “Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”