Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and combat veteran, is expected to win the Democratic nomination for Senate in Maine on Tuesday after a primary campaign that thrilled his progressive supporters but surfaced damaging reports about his personal history.
Here are five things to know about Mr. Platner, 41, of coastal Sullivan, Maine, who is on track to face Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, in the general election.
1. He is running on a progressive, populist platform. Mr. Platner has called for universal health care, taxes on the wealthy and a higher federal minimum wage. He is endorsed by leaders on the left including Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. At campaign events, he rails against billionaires and corporations. “There is no metric of hard work that justifies a billionaire when people in eastern Maine work three jobs just to put food on the table,” he said at a recent rally in Portland.
2. He is a Marine veteran and had little experience in politics before this campaign. Mr. Platner says the closest he had come to political life before his run was serving as the harbor master and leading the planning board in the tiny town of Sullivan. But last summer, he has said, he was recruited to run for Senate by organizers who had unearthed a video of him speaking out on a fishing issue. He was initially skeptical of the idea, he has said, but quickly warmed to it.
3. Some of his ex-girlfriends have said they found his behavior unsettling. Mr. Platner’s personal life came under significant scrutiny in the final days before the primary. The New York Times reported last week that three women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner described volatile and “toxic” relationships. One of them said he once twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she could not get out. He told MS NOW’s “All In With Chris Hayes” that he went through a “pretty dark period” after his combat service, but that any allegations that he had behaved violently toward a girlfriend were “simply not true.” Early in the campaign, his wife, Amy Gertner, also told a senior campaign aide that he had exchanged sexual messages with other women during their marriage. When the disclosure appeared in news reports late last month, Ms. Gertner said their marriage was “stronger than ever before.”
4. He had a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol that he covered up. Mr. Platner said in October that he had covered up a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol called a Totenkopf. He said he got the tattoo, depicting a skull-and-crossbones, while drunk nearly two decades ago, and had long been unaware of its symbolism. He became aware of its extremist associations from news media inquiries, he has said. One of his ex-girlfriends has disputed this, saying he knew about it earlier. He has also faced criticism for comments he made about women online more than a decade ago, including one that said women worried about rape should not get so drunk that “they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” He has expressed remorse over the old comments, saying that they horrify him today.
5. He easily dispatched a high-powered establishment favorite in an unusual primary. Maine’s sitting Democratic governor, Janet Mills, appears with Mr. Platner on the state’s primary ballot. But she suspended her campaign in April, bowing to fund-raising challenges and the large lead Mr. Platner had built in the polls. Ms. Mills was recruited to run for the seat by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. She sought to undercut Mr. Platner by highlighting his tattoo and old online comments, but voters were drawn to the charismatic outsider.
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