Graham Platner: A dark period or a lifetime of darkness?
by Tim Constantine · The Washington TimesOPINION:
Maine Democrats made it official at the ballot box on Tuesday. Graham Platner is their choice to run against five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins for the U.S. Senate. Mr. Platner has been plagued by a barrage of negative stories and revelations about his past, much of which he has waved away with his oft-repeated phrase, “That was a dark period in my life.”
Mr. Platner’s schtick is that he represents the working man. His bio boasts of his blue-collar credentials, and in speeches, he talks about his battles to overcome life’s challenges, leading him to being able to make a living as an oyster farmer. Except he doesn’t.
In reality, Mr. Platner comes from very economically comfortable stock. His father is an Ivy League-educated attorney, and his mother owns a very popular restaurant. When he wanted to buy a house, his father loaned him $200,000. It reminds one of President Trump talking about his father providing him with a “little loan” of $1 million. Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Platner had to go through the challenge most of us face when seeking our first bank loan. Daddy took care of it.
Likewise, Mr. Platner’s claim of working hard and being a successful oyster farmer is dubious at best.
He takes no salary from his oyster farm, and the only sales listed on company-related paperwork were to his mother’s restaurant in the total amount of about $5,000. No other customers were listed.
Virtually all of Mr. Platner’s income actually comes from a 100% disability claim with the U.S. military. He brings in close to $60,000 annually from that, a pretty good income in Sullivan, Maine, population 1,300. His family income is on track to double this year because his wife is taking a salary from his Senate campaign in an amount that will be close to $60,000 if she stays on through the year as the “volunteer coordinator.”
Accusations about Mr. Platner, 41, range from posting insensitive and offensive remarks on social media, intimidating past romantic interests with aggressive behavior, sporting a prominent Nazi tattoo, sexting with women other than his wife and more.
When asked about any of these, Mr. Platner’s default response seems to be, “it was a dark period of my life.” A closer look reveals a lifetime of darkness with very few rays of light, even in recent years.
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According to online biographies, Mr. Platner’s parents sent him to a private boarding school in Connecticut for high school, but he had disciplinary problems, refused to attend classes and was eventually kicked out.
He finished his high school years at another private school, John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, Maine. Upon his 2003 graduation, while many of his classmates either enrolled in college or began working, Mr. Platner took off backpacking in Europe. If you don’t see any of that as blue-collar or working-class behavior, you wouldn’t be alone.
In 2007, Mr. Platner got a Nazi tattoo on his chest, of an unusual skull design closely tied to the SS. According to a woman who dated him around 2012, he referred to it as “My Totenkopf,” an obvious acknowledgement of its sinister meaning. Not until 18 years after getting inked and more than a decade after the ex-girlfriend’s description of his knowledge did the raspy-voiced Mainer have the tattoo covered. At that time, he was preparing to launch his Senate run and claimed he had no idea of its significance.
Stop and think about that. Mr. Platner wants to serve in the world’s greatest deliberative body, the United States Senate. But he says he got up and stared in the mirror every day for 18 years without knowing what was printed on his own body. The other option is that his ex-girlfriend is telling the truth and his claim of ignorance is a lie.
Neither option is a good answer for a U.S. senator.
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By 2009, Mr. Platner had discovered the early version of social media. He posted insensitive and provocative remarks there for the next 12 years. He mocked sexual assault victims. He wondered aloud why Black people don’t tip. He criticized rural Americans, the group he now claims to represent, as stupid and racist. Perhaps he proved his own point on that one.
Keep in mind, this wasn’t one blacked-out weekend or one drunken tattoo-parlor trip. These posts continued week after week, month after month, year after year.
Mr. Platner served as a bartender at the Tune Inn in the District from 2011 to 2016. Wayne Laugesen, a regular at the bar back then, recalls Mr. Platner and is quoted in the New York Post as saying, “Platner was just kind of dark, you’d try to turn up a little conversation, and he wouldn’t give anything back, no smile, no acknowledgement. Just nothing coming back that was friendly and warm.”
Mr. Laugesen summed up his assessment as “he just seemed like a troubled, dark, unfriendly, unhappy person.”
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During these same days as a D.C. barkeep, Mr. Platner had some rocky romances. From 2013 to 2015, he dated Lyndsey Fifield. She was one of several women who spoke to The New York Times about the would-be senator’s behavior.
She claims Mr. Platner was abusive and physically threatening, saying he twisted her arm, grabbed her so hard he left bruises and once confined her to a room against her will.
You may recall private military contractor Blackwater. The controversial company earned a bad reputation, most especially among the progressives now backing Mr. Platner, for mercenary-like behavior, best exemplified when Blackwater employees shot civilians in Iraq. Blackwater changed its name multiple times in an effort to escape its dark notoriety and ultimately became part of what was known as Constellis.
That was when Mr. Platner went to work for them. When he was in high school, he protested against President George W. Bush, urging him to “stay out of Iraq.” Just over a dozen years later, though, Mr. Platner was taking a paycheck to carry a gun in Iraq for one of the most tainted private military contractors in U.S. history.
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Despite his extended payday in the Middle East, Mr. Platner didn’t change his habits online.
In 2018, he published a slur against homosexuals. In 2021, he posted that “all police are b———-.” That same year, he proclaimed himself a communist. If someone compiled a list of the statements made by Mr. Platner and had you read them blind, you’d tell them it wasn’t believable that someone could be such a jerk for such an extended period of time.
In fall 2023, Mr. Platner married Amy Gertner. Multiple news sources have quoted Mr. Platner’s former campaign director, who quit, and current staffers as saying Ms. Gertner told the campaign last year that her husband had exchanged sexual messages with up to a dozen women early in their marriage. Keep in mind they haven’t yet been married three years, so “early in their marriage” is still quite recent.
All of this raises the question as to when exactly the “dark period” that Mr. Platner references actually happened. Was it when he got kicked out of the high-priced private boarding school? Was it when he had a Nazi symbol permanently inked on his chest? Was it the dozen years he demonstrated racism, homophobia and hatred for law enforcement? Was it when he mocked sexual assault victims? When exactly was this dark period? Was it when he drove customers away by being an unpleasant bartender, or was it when he was a hired gun for Blackwater? Was it when he was allegedly physically intimidating to multiple girlfriends? Or was it when as a newlywed, just a couple of years ago, he was sexting with up to a dozen different women?
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From all appearances, that darkness covers virtually all of Mr. Platner’s life. It’s been filled with regrettable actions and bad decisions. There is neither any evidence nor any reason to think that any of that will change if Maine sends him to the U.S. Senate.
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Tim Constantine
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