Tuesday, June 9, Graham Platner won the Maine Democratic Senate primary with 77.7 percent of the vote. The nomination is his. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand wrapped their arms around him, promising in a joint statement that “in November, Maine voters will elect Graham Platner, and we will win a Senate majority.”

Two days later, on Thursday, a woman none of them were expecting put up a long statement on X. She said she dated Platner in 2021, that he lied to her and cheated on her, and that he told her a story about his Nazi tattoo he has never told the public. She is not a Republican operative but a self-described leftist who put “support IWW,” the Industrial Workers of the World, in her dating profile to screen for men exactly like him.

The Democratic Party ratified Graham Platner at the moment the evidence says it should be running from him. The people calling him a liar are his own side: Democratic women, his wife, the veterans he mocked, and now a leftist who went looking for a man like him and found one. More is coming, everyone close to this knows it, and the only question left is whether Democrats spend the next month trying to push him out or ride him to November.

The bias defense just died

When the first abuse account broke, the campaign had one answer: the accuser was a Republican. Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner years ago, had worked for right-leaning groups, so the campaign dismissed her as “a lifelong G.O.P. operative,” and the New York Times treated her conservatism as the thing readers should weigh.

That answer cannot survive the latest woman. She posted her account this week, Fox News reported it, and the New York Post confirmed it. She matched with Platner on Tinder, came to Maine for a seasonal job, and was drawn to him because he was a leftist. There is no Republican plot to find here.

She is also not alone among Democrats. Jenny Racicot, a Maine Democrat who says she agrees with much of his platform, told the Times “this person does not respect women.” Another Maine Democrat who dated him for years described feeling like “collateral damage to the world that is his.” His own wife flagged the sexually explicit texts he was sending other women, and the campaign confirmed the texts were real.

One conservative. Two Maine Democrats. A leftist. His wife. The only women defending Graham Platner are the exes he called for character references the night before the Times ran its story.

He knew what it meant

Platner has a Totenkopf on his chest, the death’s-head skull the SS wore. He has explained it many times, and he has explained it differently to every audience.

To Maine voters, he said he picked it drunk in Croatia in 2007, a scary-looking skull he never understood, and that no one questioned it in twenty years. To Fifield, years earlier, he called it “my Totenkopf” and joked that it was a Nazi tattoo, telling her his Marine unit chose it because they were a “death unit” who saw themselves in the SS. To the woman who came forward this week, he said he kept it as a “blood brand,” a reminder that the United States, and he along with it, were “the bad guys.”

His own camp keeps adding versions. A spokesman said he got it to honor friends who died at Ramadi. Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s former chief of staff, defended him by saying it honored comrades lost in Afghanistan, a war Platner never fought. He served in Iraq.

Underneath all of it sits his own writing. Using the handle P-Hustle, Platner discussed the Totenkopf by name on Reddit and defended SS tattoos as Marine “culture,” telling people who called the imagery Nazi that they had “no idea what they’re talking about.” He deleted the account before he ran.

Every one of these stories contradicts the others, which means every one of them is a lie. The only fact they are all built to hide is the one that survives them. He knew what the symbol was, and he has known for years. CNN put the question to him directly, and he could not answer it: how did an ex-girlfriend know his tattoo was a Nazi symbol before he says he did?

He did not remove the tattoo when he learned what it meant. He wore it for eighteen years and covered it, with a second tattoo, only in October of 2025, once it threatened the seat. The cover-up was a matter of the calendar, not his conscience. He would be wearing the death’s-head today if he were not running for office.

He mocked the men who bled

The lying does not stop with women. In 2019, on that same Reddit account, Platner mocked Teddy Daniels, a Purple Heart recipient who was shot four times by the Taliban, writing that the soldier “didn’t deserve to live.” He called the Army “absolute trash,” full of “fat, lazy trash.”

He wrote that he had joined the Marines to “have an adventure and kill some people” and called combat “an excellent experience,” which is a strange memory for the non-violent man he now says he is.

The anger came back from people who carried rifles. Senator Jim Banks told him to drop out. Rob O’Neill, the Navy SEAL credited with killing Osama bin Laden, called the post “completely barbaric.” Daniels said PTSD “does not excuse” the behavior. When Fox News asked Platner to apologize to the man he had mocked, he refused.

His own side is reaching for the exit

The fire is not coming from Susan Collins. The New York Times spent two months on his ex-girlfriends. Democratic senators grilled him in a closed-door meeting. Representative Josh Gottheimer, a centrist Democrat, said Platner should get off the ballot and let another Democrat take his place. Even Ro Khanna, who endorsed him, called the relationships “toxic” before pleading for “redemption.”

The party has a deadline and a replacement waiting. Under Maine law, Platner can be taken off the November ballot only if he withdraws by five o’clock on July 13; the party can name a substitute through July 27. Miss those dates, and he is the nominee, locked in. Governor Janet Mills suspended her own Senate campaign in April but never left the ballot, and this month she reminded everyone of it: “I am still on the ballot.”

The same week his own party lit every exit sign, Schumer and Gillibrand stood beside him and promised a majority. They are propping up the candidate they are trying to push out, and none of their pressure can make him go. Only Platner can take Platner off the ballot.

The Senate remembers Roy Moore

The Senate punishes bad candidates even in good years, and both parties keep relearning it. In 2017, in the reddest state in the country, Republicans lost a Senate seat in Alabama because their nominee was Roy Moore. Mitch McConnell said the lesson out loud after 2022: “candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.” This spring it was the Democrats who forced Eric Swalwell out of a California race before he could become that kind of liability.

Now the parties have traded the problem. The candidate on the record about rape is the Democrat. Platner told Fifield that if anyone broke into his home he would “rape them to show I’m dominant,” and his campaign did not dispute it.

And Maine is the seat that decides the chamber. It is the only Republican-held Senate seat in a state Kamala Harris carried, and she carried it by nearly five points. Democrats need a net of four seats and have no room to waste one. Susan Collins beat her last challenger by more than eight points in 2020 while Maine voted for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. A wounded Democrat does not beat a senator like that.

The clock says July 13

This is Joe Biden all over again, on a shorter clock. Biden had to be talked off a ticket he had already won, and it took a ruinous debate, three weeks, and nearly forty members of his own party. Platner sat on Chris Hayes’s show, was asked whether dropping out had ever crossed his mind, and said “no, not once.”

The Democrats have until July 13 to talk him off the ballot. After that, the man with the Totenkopf is their nominee for the one Senate seat that decides who runs the chamber.

More is coming. Everyone who has watched this race knows it, his own party most of all. The only question left is whether they spend the next month pushing him out, or ride the death’s-head to Election Day.