Graham Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and Marine veteran, announced on Aug. 19 that he was running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Maine. His stated objective was to challenge the “oligarchy,” meaning both the Democrat establishment and the Republican incumbent, Sen. Susan Collins.
At the outset, Platner’s campaign appeared to have incredible momentum. The leftist candidate raised several million dollars in a matter of weeks, managed to land endorsements from current lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M), and struck a chord with locals, as reflected in early polls indicating that he had a sizeable lead over Democrat Gov. Janet Mills.
Platner’s campaign has, however, encountered a massive and potentially insurmountable obstacle: his radical past.
‘Platner is not a victim of opposition research. … Accountability does not exist in playing the victim of your own behavior.’
In the wake of damning revelations about the leftist candidate’s social media posts and his newly concealed tattoo of a skull image similar to that popularized by Adolf Hitler’s SS elite Nazi guard, at least four key staffers have jumped ship.
The latest individuals to call it quits are the campaign’s national finance director, Ronald Holmes, and its treasurer, Victoria Perrone.
Holmes, a Democrat operative who previously served as finance director on New York Democrat Rep. Josh Riley’s congressional campaign, resigned on Friday, suggesting that Platner’s campaign no longer met his “standards.”
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Graham Platner. Photo by Sophie Park/Getty Images
“I joined this campaign because I believed in building something different — a campaign of fresh energy, integrity, and reform-minded thinking in a political system that often resists exactly those things,” Holmes wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “Somewhere along the way, I began to feel that my professional standards as a campaign professional no longer fully aligned with those of the campaign.”
A campaign spokesperson told Politico, “Ron helped the campaign reach out to big-dollar donors, and we appreciated his efforts. But the reality is our campaign’s fundraising success has come largely from small-dollar donors.”
“Nearly 90% of what we’ve raised has come from small-dollar donations and online donors, which has been and [continues] to be run by our digital fundraising director,” added the spokesperson.
Timothy Facciola of the Judge Street Journal on Substack revealed on Sunday that Holmes wasn’t the only Platner staffer to pack it in last week.
Citing a Federal Election Commission form that was filed on Friday as well as an unnamed source said to be familiar with the matter, Facciola reported that Perrone, the president and founder of the consulting firm Spruce Street Compliance, resigned as treasurer on Tuesday.
Ben Martello — a political strategist who served as an adviser to former Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.) — appears to have stepped into the role.
Blaze News has reached out to Perrone and the Platner campaign for comment.
Perrone, who has been closely involved with Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign, was apparently hired last month to help Platner’s campaign deal with its various scandals.
According to Politico, Perrone was the individual who pressed members of Platner’s campaign team to sign non-disclosure agreements after his Reddit posts came to light — including posts in which he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested service members worried about being raped should buy “Kevlar underwear,” and smeared all police officers as “bastards.”
Former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald (D) resigned as political director of Platner’s campaign last month over the posts, noting, “These statements were not known to me when I agreed to join the campaign, and they are not words or values I can stand behind in a candidate for the United States Senate.”
Within days of McDonald’s resignation, footage went viral revealing that Platner had an apparent “totenkopf” tattoo on his chest — the symbol of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, the branch that guarded the Nazi concentration camps.
Amid the fallout over the apparent Nazi tattoo, the Democrat candidate’s longtime friend Kevin Brown similarly jumped ship.
Brown, who took over as Platner’s campaign manager on Oct. 21, announced days later that he was leaving, suggesting that the move was the result of new familial demands on his time.
Brown said in a statement obtained by WGME-TV, “Graham is a dear friend. I started this campaign Tuesday but found out Friday we have a baby on the way.”
“Graham deserves someone who is 100% in on his race, and we want to lean into this new experience as a family, so it was best we step back sooner than later so Graham can get the manager he deserves,” Brown added.
Platner reportedly suggested during a town hall last week that the Democratic Party was the cause of his recent run of bad luck, stating, “I’m running as a Democrat still, despite the fact my party is destroying my life.”
“Platner is not a victim of opposition research. This is what happens when you run for federal office,” Genevieve McDonald said in a recent statement. “People scrutinize everything you’ve ever done. Every word and every action. Accountability does not exist in playing the victim of your own behavior.”
McDonald added, “We should not be having a debate about Nazi symbolism tattooed on the potentially top-ticket Democrat in Maine. The fact we are even willing to entertain it shows desperation within the party, not dedication, and how far we have fallen from rational thought.”
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