The Platner Blame Game
Angry Dems say the Mainer is not ready for primetime and accuse consultants of skimping on vetting.
THE CONTINUOUS WAVE of public controversy surrounding Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner has given way to a private wave of recriminations over how the party’s marquee Senate race ended up in such a tenuous place.
And within the fractious and competitive world of Democratic operatives and consulting firms, it is the Philadelphia-based ad firm chiefly behind Platner’s rise that has taken it most on the chin.
Fight Agency is a new shop that has had a fairly remarkable run of success. Launched in 2025 by alums of the campaigns of Jon Fetterman, Ruben Gallego, and Bernie Sanders, the group quickly set the pace for the rest of the party in re-engaging the Trump-curious voters it lost in 2024. Its formula was fairly obvious: elevate more nontraditional, outside-the-box candidates with a working-class and anti-establishment appeal. And it scored arguably one of the most significant wins over the past year, when it helped a previously unknown New York state assemblyman named Zohran Mamdani to Gracie Mansion.
Platner seemed poised to be Fight Agency’s next triumph. And he may very well prove to be. But since October, he has repeatedly been accused of not being forthright about various episodes in his past, both troubling and embarrassing. There have been stories about Platner’s years-old Reddit comments, his Totenkopf tattoo, and whether—as the son of a Dartmouth-educated lawyer and the recipient of a private education—he was inflating his “working-class” background. Late last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Platner’s wife had discovered him sexting with other women in the spring of 2025. And last week the New York Times published a report about how some of Platner’s ex-girlfriends found him to be demeaning to women and, in at least one instance, physically threatening.
Platner has denied that last item. And he has continued to insist that he was unaware of the meaning of his tattoo. He has stressed that much of the controversy stems from a period in his life when he was struggling with PTSD following tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, overcoming a drinking problem and social isolation. And he has argued, more generally, that Maine voters are simply not as interested in or obsessed with dredging up the skeletons from his past as the national press corps is.
But the problem remains that he previously insisted there were no more skeletons. And there clearly were, leading to one of two conclusions: