PORTLAND, Maine — Graham Platner sought to move past a recent spate of controversies casting a new shadow over his Senate campaign, returning to his stump speech in front of a mostly supportive crowd days before the Maine primary.
“I think a lot of folks at the national level misunderstand,” he said, to murmurs of agreement from an audience of Maine voters well-aware of the swarm of national media outlets lining the edges of the room. “The reason they keep getting everything wrong is they think this is a race about me, but it isn't. This is a race about us.”
Platner spoke for about 35 minutes to a crowd of several hundred at the Elks Lodge in Portland before taking questions. After telling supporters that his past had been “weaponized” at a rally in Bar Harbor on Friday — the day after the New York Times reported that several ex-girlfriends alleged disturbing patterns of behavior — he was back to covering more typical ground on Sunday night.
He lamented that clam diggers and carpenters used to be able to make their finances work in Maine, but no longer could. He said billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos shouldn’t exist. He called for structural change to address a range of challenges ranging from health care to foreign policy. And he took shots at Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, but also occasionally at his certain wings of own party.
“We are going to beat someone that the establishment of the Democratic Party has failed to unseat for 30 years,” Platner said of Collins, to applause. “We are going to beat someone who, for years, has tried to trick us all into thinking that she's a moderate.”
He did not address the recent controversies head-on, nor was he directly asked about it by attendees. He took five questions, covering topics ranging from efforts to prevent a fish farm in Frenchman’s Bay to what committees he hoped to serve on in the Senate (appropriations, commerce, agriculture and health, he said).
Platner has made town halls a central part of his campaign as he has barnstormed the state, taking questions from voters at more than 80 events since his campaign launch last fall.
But Sunday’s Portland event, just two days before the Democratic primary, was also the first since the new allegations about his past treatment of women, the latest in a series of controversies for his campaign.
On Thursday, the New York Times reported several women who had dated Platner were disturbed by his behavior toward them. That report also called into question Platner’s assertion that he did not know a tattoo on his chest resembled a Nazi symbol. Platner acknowledged he was a “bad boyfriend” but denied he had ever been physical toward women or that he knew what the tattoo represented when he got it.
That followed reporting from the Wall Street Journal that Platner had exchanged sexual text messages with other women after he was married in 2023, something his campaign had been aware of since the fall.
Platner also came under scrutiny last fall for offensive old Reddit posts as well as the tattoo. He has argued that his past conduct reflects a difficult period in his life when he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after leaving the military, and he asked the state’s voters to judge the person he is now.
His campaign continued strong in spite of those past controversies. But the most recent reports have left some Democrats skittish about his candidacy on the eve of a primary in which he is all but certain to emerge as the voters’ choice to take on Collins. Gov. Janet Mills, the preferred pick of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in the race, suspended her campaign in April, although she remains on the ballot. David Costello, the Democratic Senate candidate who challenged Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) in 2024, is also in the primary.
Maine’s Senate race is a top target for the party nationally, with Collins the only Republican senator seeking reelection this year in a state Kamala Harris won in 2024. Democrats' chances of regaining a majority in the upper chamber hinge heavily on the state.
After Platner spoke in Portland on Sunday, an attendee presented him with a hand-drawn card the audience had been passing around that included the message “we’ve got your back.” Platner appeared visibly moved by the gift.
“This is a pretty hard thing to go through,” he said.
Laurie Hudson, who’d worked on the card along with her friend, Elizabeth Wise, said she’d been motivated to show Platner how she supported him as he faced political struggles.
“It’s hard to watch, but makes me more determined to help him out,” she said.
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