Graham Platner easily won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Maine despite an array of scandals involving a Nazi tattoo, antisemitic horseplay, offensive online commentary, flagrant lying, serial infidelity, and domestic abuse. He appears poised to end his candidacy after an ex-girlfriend’s credible rape accusation—amid sagging poll numbers and a looming deadline to select a new candidate—finally compelled Democrats and sympathetic journalists to abandon ship.
Whereas most normal observers saw this coming, Democrats repeatedly defended Platner as the warning signs mounted. Many vouched for his character, insisting that his past “mistakes” were a testament to his “working-class” authenticity. Supporters hailed Platner’s personal odyssey—from upper-middle-class boarding school washout and dirtbag leftist to unemployed oyster supplier to his mother’s fine-dining restaurant—as a classic tale of American redemption.
Alas, it was not.
A number of Democratic lawmakers eyeing prominent roles in the 2028 presidential primary—whether as candidates or kingmakers—went out of their way to boost Platner’s candidacy and associate themselves with his particular brand of scumbag socialism. Here are the ones who disgraced themselves the most on the road to Platner’s inevitable demise.
Ro Khanna
Khanna, the most shamelessly ambitious Democrat since Barack Obama, was arguably Platner’s most enthusiastic booster in Congress. A day after the New York Times reported on allegations of toxic behavior from the candidate’s former girlfriends, Khanna flew to Maine for a campaign rally where he argued that electing Platner to the U.S. Senate despite his troubled past would bring much-needed “redemption” to a “broken” America.
“For this country to heal, we need to find some way of having grace. We need to find some way of having redemption,” Khanna said. “We need to find some way of saying that if someone felt hurt by Graham in a past relationship, we can listen to them and we can listen to Graham, and we can have conversations as mature Americans, as fellow citizens.”
Khanna urged Platner supporters not to attack the women who came forward, even though the candidate himself had already denounced them as politically motivated liars.
“By going all in on Platner, Khanna is putting up his own ambitions as collateral,” Politico reported at the time, noting that if more scandal emerged that further damaged Platner’s credibility, it would “raise questions about Khanna’s political judgment as he eyes a larger national role.”
Ruben Gallego
Few Democrats have demonstrated worse political judgment than Gallego, who endorsed Platner in early March. Several weeks later, his good friend and party companion, former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), ended his gubernatorial bid and resigned from Congress amid multiple allegations of sexual assault.
Days before the allegations surfaced, Gallego defended Swalwell by suggesting he was the victim of a politically motivated smear campaign. He eventually changed his mind, claiming somewhat incredibly to have been “shocked and upset” by Swalwell’s behavior.
No stranger to controversy involving toxic behavior, Gallego is best known for serving his ex-wife divorce papers when she was nine months pregnant and demanding that she cover his attorney’s fees.
In an interview with the Bulwark, Gallego described Platner as an “authentic man” who would be a welcome addition to the U.S. Senate despite his troubled past. “You know, he’s not antisemitic,” he said. “And more importantly, you know—not more importantly, but just as important—is that he’s going to win this election, and we need to win elections.”
Bernie Sanders
The elderly socialist endorsed Platner soon after the candidate launched his campaign in August 2025, and appeared with Platner days later at a “Fight Oligarchy” rally in Maine. Sanders continued to support Platner despite his myriad scandals and often implied the negative stories were manufactured by nefarious billionaires.
“There are people in the United States Senate right now who are not saints, I can tell you that,” Sanders said in June after the Times reported on his toxic behavior toward women. “People can argue about this aspect of Graham or another, but to my mind, right now, we need allies in the United States Senate who have the guts to take on the big money that is dominating this country.”
Elizabeth Warren
Pocahontas endorsed Platner once it was clear he was going to win the primary. At a campaign rally in April, she praised the alleged rapist as “my kind of man … a man who not only has the values, but a man who believes in accountability.”
Warren continued to support Platner after he met with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill last month and assured them he would never face credible allegations of sexual assault. “It’s not a secret I’ve had a messy, complicated life,” he told them after Warren asked about the possibility of future revelations. “The worst of the rumors we’ve all heard are not true.”
(They were, in fact, true.)
Zohran Mamdani / Morris Katz
The anti-American mayor of New York City never formally endorsed Platner, but he clearly wanted him to win—not least because the mayor’s left-wing political operation was deeply intertwined with Platner’s campaign. Morris Katz, the 27-year-old cofounder of Fight Agency, became a media sensation due to his work as a senior adviser to both candidates.
Mamdani and Katz “are like each other’s muses,” Vanity Fair reported in November. Katz was instantly impressed after meeting Platner. “Within a few minutes of talking to him, I was, like, ‘This guy owes it to the country to run for Senate,'” he told the New Yorker for an effusive Platner profile that would ultimately require a correction from the magazine’s vaunted fact-checking department.
The wunderkind operative reportedly threatened a former Platner aide, Genevieve McDonald, in an effort to forestall reports from the Times and the Wall Street Journal on the candidate’s infidelity.
“It’s no one’s fucking business what happened in Graham & Amy’s marriage before he was ever a candidate for office,” Katz seethed on X after his threats didn’t work. “There should be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust, and prioritize vengeance over decency.”
Ron Klain
The longtime Biden adviser—best known for helping the former president “prepare” for the CNN debate in 2024—joined Airbnb as chief legal officer after leaving the White House. He has also been quietly advising Democrats in his spare time. His clients include Mamdani, Khanna, and Platner.
In June, Klain dismissed criticism of Platner’s Nazi tattoo as a “partisan attack.” He suggested the candidate had gotten the Totenkopf symbol, commonly associated with Nazi death squads, tattooed on his chest as a tribute to his “fallen comrades.”
Though Platner had repeatedly claimed to have only recently learned the significance of the Nazi symbol, several former girlfriends have accused him of lying. “He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo,” said Lyndsey Fifield, who was smeared as a political operative after telling the Times about her toxic relationship with Platner.
“They were like a death unit, they were killers,” Fifield said of Platner’s explanation for why he and several fellow soldiers chose the Nazi symbol. “They literally, deliberately, selected it because it was relevant to their military unit.”
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