‘This Was a Black Eye’: Progressives Face Reckoning Over Graham Platner

The collapse of Graham Platner’s Maine Senate campaign has sparked a painful reckoning for Democrats, raising questions about candidate vetting and the party’s embrace of unconventional outsiders.

Top progressives defended Platner for months amid a series of controversies, from a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol to his online posts blaming survivors of sexual assault. Many of them initially dismissed allegations from Platner’s ex-girlfriends describing a pattern of emotional abuse, taking his word that no more incriminating information was coming. They finally pulled their support earlier this month after Platner was accused of sexual assault, an allegation he continues to deny.

“I will say I got that call wrong,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), a potential 2028 presidential contender who strongly backed Platner, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And if there’s some self-reflection, it is that we all need to see the signs earlier of people who may engage in domestic violence.”

“Look, I wasn’t the only one,” Khanna added. “You had Planned Parenthood. You had Senator Warren. You had the entire Democratic Party. But I did get that call wrong.”

Khanna is the only Platner endorser in Congress to publicly express regret over his decision, however.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Platner’s highest-profile backer, declined to comment when asked whether he has second thoughts about supporting his campaign.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), another top Platner endorser who said at an April rally that Platner is, “My kind of man,” dodged repeatedly this week when asked if she regretted her support for him. She wanted to look forward.

“We need leaders in Washington who represent our values,” Warren said. “I asked Platner to withdraw from the race. He has withdrawn. Now it’s time for us to get a candidate in Maine and to take back the majority here in the Senate.”

Platner captured the enthusiasm of many Democrats with his populist, working-class platform and his promise to shake up the status quo in Washington. He drew huge rallies across Maine, giving his party hope for unseating Republican Sen. Susan Collins and helping flip control of the Senate in November.

But holes quickly appeared in his oyster farmer narrative that masked a privileged upbringing, adding to questions about the lax vetting he received before he entered the race last summer, even before the assault allegations emerged.

Asked if Platner ought to have received more rigorous vetting, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who had earlier dismissed allegations against the candidate, told NOTUS, “Seems like it, doesn’t it?” He declined to answer further questions about his decision to endorse him.

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota), another Democrat who backed Platner, said that candidate vetting “is not my responsibility.”

“Here’s the thing: Graham Platner was a compelling and really exciting candidate because he was talking about the issues that matter to people, and he was capturing how fed up people are with a system that is not working for them,” Smith told NOTUS. “And now he’s not the candidate anymore. And we have to figure out, Maine has to figure out who their next candidate is going to be.”

Progressives now appear to be rallying behind former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson to replace Platner in the Senate race.

Sanders said Monday he’s not supporting a new candidate yet. But progressive groups, including Our Revolution, which was founded by the Vermont senator, have endorsed Jackson, a logger from a rural area of the state who unsuccessfully ran for governor last month.

Jackson said Platner had deceived him about his past.

“Graham told me point-blank that there was nothing in his past that I had to worry about. And he lied to me. And he lied to a lot of us,” Jackson said in an interview with MS NOW.

Democrats are aiming to replace Platner at a nominating convention later this month. They don’t have much time, facing a July 27 state deadline to replace him on the ballot and several candidates vying for the nomination.

Some of Platner’s top critics aren’t so eager to move on, demanding introspection and a change in tactics by progressives across the country.

“Bernie Sanders needs to apologize to the voters of Maine and to everyone that donated to that train wreck of a campaign,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) told Fox News. “More than anyone, he pushed Platner into the election … There’s plenty of those people that have to humble themselves — humble yourself, and stop pushing these kinds of people on people in my party.”

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pennsylvania), who faced criticism after she told CNN in June that Platner had “disqualified himself” following allegations of emotional abuse by his ex-girlfriends, said her party ought to speak with moral clarity and not fall into the same defensive crouch often exhibited by the Republican Party.

“Not a tough call, and for folks to contort themselves around that makes no sense,” Dean told NOTUS in a phone interview. “ We stand for certain values. We should speak our mind and not hide behind ‘Oh gosh, we have to win this race.’”

Shannon Watts, an author and political activist who opposed Platner’s campaign, told NOTUS that “there’s just no way to say you didn’t know that this guy lacked character.”

“You can say you didn’t realize that he was going to be accused of sexual assault, but the writing was on the wall. I do think it’s Trumpian to not apologize and to not say that going forward you’re going to do things differently,” Watts added.

Democratic groups that opposed Platner in the primary race piled on.

“If there’s one lesson Democrats need to take from this, it’s to stop betting on vibe-based candidates with glaring red flags,” said Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILYs List, which endorsed Maine Gov. Janet Mills in the Senate race.

Some progressives argue that Platner’s faults as a candidate shouldn’t obscure the popularity of his populist message.

Adam Carlson, a progressive strategist and pollster, admitted he ignored “an insane amount of obvious red flags for months on end.”

“Graham tapped into some very real anger in the electorate. He did inspire people. That shouldn’t be lost on all of this,” Carlson said. “We need to figure out — as a party, not just a progressive-left anti-establishment faction — a way to harness that without compromising our values as human beings and Democrats.”

Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Platner was just one misfire among a crop of other promising progressive candidates, including Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Nebraska independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn.

“The point is being proven across the country that bold economic populists can win, but certainly this was a black eye, and it’s very good that he got out of the race,” Green told CNN last week.

Smith also argued that Platner’s collapse shouldn’t hold back the progressive movement.

“What happened to him was a flaw in that campaign and in the candidate, but it is not a flaw in the progressive movement, and it’s not a flaw in the message that progressives are winning on all over the country,” the senator told NOTUS. “And I think it’s important to distinguish those two things.”