Graham Platner heads into Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Maine having watched his favorability numbers begin to turn upside down following a New York Times report detailing accounts of physical intimidation from former girlfriends, ongoing revelations about his conduct on platforms associated with explicit content, and his wife’s reported acknowledgment to the campaign that he has been involved with other women during their two-year marriage. Sunday talk show Democrats offered a range of contortions, with Congressman Ro Khanna saying he believes the women who accused Planer while simultaneously arguing the behavior is not disqualifying, and Senator Mark Warner deferring to Maine voters while declining to apply the same standard he applied enthusiastically to Brett Kavanaugh.
Steve Collins, columnist for Maine Trust for Local News, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer the day before the primary to assess how the race is likely to unfold.
Collins said Platner will win the primary. Governor Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign but did not formally withdraw, has done essentially nothing to ask voters to support her, and while there will be a protest vote for Mills and fellow candidate David Costello from Democrats genuinely alarmed by what has been reported, it will not be enough to deny Platner the nomination. The more consequential question is what the revelations have done to his general election prospects against Senator Susan Collins.
Collins said Platner has already lost a small but meaningful percentage of potential voters and cannot afford to lose anyone in what was always going to be a narrow race at best. Defeating an incumbent as entrenched and as skilled at threading the moderate needle as Susan Collins requires running essentially a perfect campaign and maximizing turnout among every available constituency. The particular demographic Collins identified as most at risk for Platner is older white women with higher education levels, a group he needs to win over to have any realistic path to victory and one that is most likely to find the pattern of conduct described in the Times, combined with the pattern of categorical lying about it, disqualifying. His wife’s public support has helped provide some stabilizing optics, but the question is whether that holds as more information continues to emerge, and Collins said there is no particular reason to assume the revelations are finished.
On Platner’s core appeal, Collins said in person he is charismatic, surprisingly sharp for someone without extensive formal education, and a genuinely good candidate in the performance sense. His working-class positioning and veteran identity remain his bread and butter and he has not visibly lost those voters yet. The problem is that the discrepancy between the persona he projects and the picture being assembled from his actual biography, business history, online conduct, and the accounts of multiple women is so extensive and so layered that it compounds. Collins said he assumes all politicians lie to him but acknowledged there is lying and then there is a pattern of insulting-your-intelligence lying on one thing after another, and Platner is in the latter category.
He noted the logical problem Democrats like Khanna have created for themselves by saying they believe the women while simultaneously arguing Planer should remain in the race. If you believe the women, you are by definition calling Platner a liar, and that characterization extends beyond his conduct to his credibility on everything else. The Nazi tattoo claim, that he wore it for twenty years without knowing what it meant, is a specific instance where the New York Times reviewed texts from Lindsay Field written long before the campaign began, in which she referenced the tattoo by its correct characterization, directly contradicting Platner’s claim that she is lying and politically motivated.
On Collins’s vulnerabilities, the columnist said her popularity is down from its historic highs and Maine is not a Trump-friendly state, which creates some room for Platner to run the race he wants to run. She has been less visibly adversarial toward the current administration than she was during Trump’s first term, which satisfies some conservatives but potentially softens the contrast she would otherwise present to a persuadable electorate. He said she is a very smart politician who has successfully maintained her cross-partisan position for years, but he is skeptical she remains as bulletproof as she once appeared. The race will be expensive, the Maine electorate will be thoroughly saturated with advertising by November, and despite everything, Platner cannot be written off.