Graham Platner, endorsed by Stephen King, won the Democratic nomination for the US Senate in Maine, but faces significant protest votes due to past scandals. Nearly 20% of votes may go to rival Janet Mills, who withdrew from the race.
Key points
Graham Platner won the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Maine
Stephen King endorsed Platner, boosting his campaign
Janet Mills, who withdrew, may receive nearly 20% of the vote
Platner faces multiple scandals impacting his support
The situation raises concerns for the Democratic party
Mentioned in this story
Graham PlatnerStephen KingJanet MillsDemocratic partyRepublican party
It was over the moment he received the endorsement of Maine’s most famous resident: Stephen King, the master of horror, who announced on Tuesday that he voted for Graham Platner.
More than 100,000 Democrats in Maine agreed, making Platner, a marine veteran and oyster farmer, their nominee for the US Senate against Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November.
But many more did not, with Platner’s rival Janet Mills, who backed out of the race earlier this year after struggling to raise enough funds, seemingly on course to receive nearly one in five votes without even campaigning.
That protest vote should set off alarm bells about the damage done to Platner by a steady drip of scandal over several months, including old incendiary Reddit posts, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, sexually explicit messages sent to other women early in his marriage and accusations from a former girlfriend that he was physically intimidating.
The controversies have caused an existential crisis for the Democratic party of 2026, raising a series of questions with no easy answers.
Shouldn’t the party that condemns white supremacists find a Nazi tattoo instantly disqualifying, especially with some Democrats already fending off charges of antisemitism? Wait, Platner’s defenders say, he says he got the tattoo during a night of drinking while he was a marine, and did not know the image had been associated with Nazis; he has since covered it with a different design. How pure are your purity tests?
But shouldn’t the party of #MeToo, so quick to “believe women” and condemn Donald Trump, apply the same standard to Platner? Sure, say Platner’s supporters, but Platner’s main accuser turned out to be a Republican operative, whose most incendiary claims about incidents in their former relationship are disputed by Platner. He has apologised for his past behaviour and said he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression after combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shouldn’t everyone get a second chance?
“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner told supporters in Blue Hill, , on Tuesday.
Q&A
What controversies are surrounding Graham Platner's campaign?
Graham Platner faces scandals including old incendiary Reddit posts, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, and accusations of intimidation from a former girlfriend.
Who endorsed Graham Platner in his Senate campaign?
Graham Platner was endorsed by Stephen King, a prominent author and resident of Maine.
How many votes did Janet Mills receive despite not campaigning?
Janet Mills is projected to receive nearly one in five votes, despite having withdrawn from the race earlier this year.
What does Platner's victory mean for the Democratic party in 2026?
Platner's victory raises concerns for the Democratic party due to the significant protest vote and the scandals affecting his campaign.
This is nuanced and complex. Despite modern pressures to express opinions with passionate intensity and clanging certainty, is it fine to say you’re not sure? Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is among those wrestling honestly with the ambiguities.
She told CNN: “Obviously there’s a lot in that behaviour that’s really challenging – it’s hard to stomach. But, at the end of the day … if the choice on the ballot is between that and a senator [Collins] who’s voted to take healthcare away from millions of Americans, that’s the situation that we have to weigh.”
Advocates for Platner contend that Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high”, delivered at the 2016 Democratic national convention, has been mugged by the reality of the past decade. The herd mentality that forced US Senator Al Franken to resign in 2018 over accusations of sexual misconduct is dead.
Instead, they argue, Democrats are hungry for fighters to beat Republicans at their own game and, if that means fighting dirty, so be it. This year’s war over congressional redistricting is one example.
Kyle Kulinski, a progressive and host of the YouTube political talkshow Secular Talk, told Politico: “If we’re convinced you walk the walk on policy, we’ll overlook personal issues. The days of weak, apologetic Dems are over. Our Tea Party is here.”
Platner, they believe, has that most precious commodity in modern politics: authenticity. He seems to embody the working man of Maine with a beard, gruff voice, tattoos, military record and enough mental scars to fill a country music album.
Not everyone buys this argument. John Fetterman, a Democratic US senator for Pennsylvania, told CNN: “Being a dirtbag is not authentic. You know, being a dirtbag is being a dirtbag.”
But Platner is also a political outsider in an age when the Washington establishment is loathed. He is an echo of both Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran insurgent campaigns in 2016 based on economic populism of one kind or another. The more that Washington Democrats condemn him from fancy TV studios, the more that working people in Maine may well rally around him.
a crowd cheering
Attendees celebrate as Graham Platner speaks during a primary election night watch party after winning the Democratic nomination on Tuesday in Blue Hill, Maine. Photograph: Robert F Bukaty/AP
And like Trump, allegations about his personal life are quickly dismissed as evidence of a powerful elite conspiring to bring down the anti-politician. Platner said on Tuesday: “Now, the national pundits and the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by. But in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not about me at all.”
Gesturing to the crowd before him, he added: “This is a movement about us.” They cheered.
The framing had a whiff of Trump’s timeworn refrain: “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you – and I’m just standing in their way.”
Platner’s victory speech to a euphoric crowd offered further clues as to how he will fight the general election against Collins. He spoke of personal redemption and learning from his past mistakes. “Every day I wake up and I try to be a little bit better and a little bit kinder than I was the day before, and if you give me the chance, I will be a senator for the people who cannot afford to buy a senator.”
He also laid out a case against Collins as the embodiment of that dreaded Washington status quo. Her name elicited boos as Platner said: “Susan Collins may have started her career decades ago in Washington with good intentions, but she has become just as spineless and corrupt as the establishment she now serves.
“She got elected promising to protect Roe v Wade, only to turn around and put a justice on the supreme court who overturned it. She lied to us.”
More boos. Abortion has faded from the political agenda of late, but it seems Platner is poised to remind voters this is their first chance to hold Collins accountable for ending the constitutional right to the procedure. He promised to codify Roe v Wade – and pass the proposed Medicare for All system of universal healthcare, for good measure.
Another paradox. Platner has faced withering public scrutiny over his personal conduct towards women. Now Collins can expect a reckoning over her political conduct towards women. “Remember what Susan Collins did to us!” a female voter could be heard saying at Platner’s watch party.
Platner also pitched himself as seeking to apply checks and balances to the Trump presidency, the corrupt elite and “the Epstein class”. His ability to tap into anti-Trump sentiment to unify the Democratic coalition, and convince its voters that control of the US Senate is more important than his own flaws, could make all the difference.
Even some of Platner’s supporters acknowledge that he is an imperfect messenger for this moment. They also say Democrats should stop making the perfect the enemy of the good.
But opponents worry that there is both an ethical and a pragmatic case against him. A general electorate is quite different from a Democratic primary electorate – and even minor erosion among women, Jewish voters or independents could be enough to save Collins. Then, will there be more revelations to come, and will they tarnish the Democrats’ entire national brand?
It is too late to play safe now. Democrats have rolled the dice.
Viewed from one angle, their anti-Trump candidate is also a mini-Trump. Viewed from another, Platner’s progressive policy agenda – universal healthcare, ending forever wars, taking back power from corporations and billionaires – offers a tantalising glimpse of a post-Trump future.
