By Grace Gilson
Why did it take sexual assault allegations to collapse Graham Platner’s Maine Senate campaign when the Nazi-linked tattoo was there all along — for 18 years?
Posted CEO of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, on X:
“Leaders should not have needed another scandal to act. The Nazi tattoo should have been enough.”
A slew of national Democratic political leaders enthusiastically supported Platner after he won his Democratic primary in June on an anti-Israel progressive platform, but turned against him only after the latest sexual misconduct allegation surfaced.
His supporters included Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Chuck Shumer (NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Martin Heinrich (NM), Chris Murphy (Conn.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) and others.
Greenblatt’s point was that all of these leaders and others should have pulled their endorsements after it surfaced last October that Platner had a chest tattoo of a Totenkopf, a Nazi-era skull-and-crossbones design favored by SS officers.
At the time, Platner said that he had gotten the tattoo while “inebriated” as a young adult when he was on shore leave from a tour of duty in Iraq, without knowing what it meant.
A number of people who knew him before his political ascent, including at least one of the women who accused him of sexual misbehaviour, said he had been aware of the symbol’s provenance.
In any event, he kept the tattoo for 18 years, having the scull covered with a Celtic knot only after he was called out on it.
His campaign had dismissed as irrelevant noise the backlash the tattoo revelation received, as well as criticism over allegations that he had deployed race and gender stereotypes in the past as irrelevant noise.
“I said, ‘None of this will or should stop him from becoming a US senator,’” Daniel Moraff, a progressive strategist who had headhunted Platner, told the Wall Street Journal last month, before the recent sex assault allegations by Politico revelations.
The vetting process, said Moraff, revealed Graham’s hateful epithets — such as “all cops are bastads” and “Black people don’t tip” — but not the tattoo, so Platner was deemed acceptable to the Democratic party in Maine.
The tattoo didn’t seem to be a dealbreaker for voters, since he coasted to victory in the June primary after his primary opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her candidacy in late April, saying her campaign could not afford to continue.
The question of why his backers ignored warning signs still looms.
Brian Romick, the president and CEO of the Democratic Majority for Israel, said he didn’t understand why progressives had supported “a candidate with so many obvious red flags, including an allegation of sexual assault and a Nazi tattoo.”
And Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which did not endorse Platner, told the Forward ahead of Platner’s exit that “a lesson for Democrats is that we shouldn’t compromise.”
“There were red flags about Platner from the outset,” Soifer said. “They just continued to compound on each other as more stories came out. But the Nazi tattoo for us alone was one too many.”
New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer poasted on X:
“I said it in June: Nothing about this guy was right. From the first abuse allegations to his Nazi tattoo, the red flags were there. His endorsers just chose to accept them.”
Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said of Platner, “exactly the person the Democrataic Party needs to win back working people.”
However, New York State Sen. Julia Salazar, a Democratic Socialist, said:
“Sorry to the well-intentioned people who made the mistake of supporting this guy. But: having a Nazi tattoo doesn’t pass the sniff test for running for US Senate, nor did his excuses. And far worse that he faces a credible allegation of rape,” Salazar wrote in a post on X.
Jewish Republicans said of the Democratic response to Platner’s campaign: too little, too late.
“I didn’t support Graham Platner as soon [as] we all learned he’s a Nazi,” Republican Max Abrahms, a political scientist focusing on terrorism, wrote in a post on X.
“For the Democratic Party, his being a Nazi wasn’t disqualifying. They viewed it as an asset. Platner matters politically for what he says about mainstream Democrats.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition said:
“American Jews will never forget that leading Democrats chose to stand with Graham Platner KNOWING FULL WELL THAT HE HAD A NAZI SS CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD TATTOO,” the group wrote in a post on X.”
