Maine senate hopeful Graham Platner’s campaign is facing an increasingly uphill battle as additional past comments by the candidate – who earned Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont’s endorsement – continue to surface.
Newsweek reached out to Platner’s campaign and Sanders’s office outside of normal business hours by email on Saturday evening for comment.
Why It Matters
Platner – a 41-year-old oyster farmer, Marine, and political newcomer – made headlines for his progressive, populist stances, giving him a credible chance against Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine.
Sanders backed Platner’s campaign, and the senatorial hopeful has raised millions of dollars for his campaign.
However, that has all changed over the past few days as reports from outlets including Politico, The Washington Post, The Hill, and The Bangor Daily News uncovered past messages from Platner written on the message board site Reddit – some of which have been deleted as Platner seeks to distance himself from them.
The backlash and controversy sparked by the revelation led Platner’s political director, former Maine State Representative Genevieve McDonald, to resign from his campaign. McDonald told the Bangor Daily News that she did not know about the past messages when she agreed to joint the campaign, and “they are not words or values I can stand behind in a candidate.”
The controversy arose after Maine Governor Janet Mills announced her bid for the Senate, directly rivaling Platner. Mills at the age of 77 would be the oldest first-term senator if she won.
What To Know
Platner now faces fresh backlash for 2013 Reddit comments that talked about racial stereotypes, particularly the tipping habits of Black people, saying, “I work as a bartender and it always amazes me how solid this stereotype is.”
“Every now and again a black patron will leave a 15-20% tip, but usually it [is] between 0-5%. There’s got to be a reason behind it, what is it?”
He made the comment as part of a Reddit post entitled “What is one question you have always wanted to ask someone of another race?”
The Bangor Daily News also found a 2013 comment on a post about underwear designed to prevent sexual assault, in which Platner wrote that people should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f—-ked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?”
These posts follow the initial report of comments about political violence, such as saying people who “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle … ought to do some reading of history” and that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.”
What People Are Saying
Platner told CNN on Friday: “That was very much me f****** around the internet. I don’t want people to see me for who I was in my worst Internet comment—or even frankly who I was in my best internet comment…I don’t think any of that is indicative of who I am today, really.”
He told Politico, who first reported on the posts: “I made dumb jokes and picked fights. But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired s*** poster.”
And in comments to The Washington Post, Platner said: “I can honestly say I did not know what the f*** I was talking about. I have been for quite some time on the opposite side of this conversation.”
Genevieve McDonald in her resignation statement said: “While I am empathetic to Graham’s experiences and respect his personal journey and growth, I cannot overlook the volume and nature of his past comments, many of which were made as an adult, not as a young man.”
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