He was rough around the edges, plain spoken and an outsider to politics. This apparently appealed to the Democratic voters in Maine, so when Graham Platner, 41, decided to run against two-time governor, Janet Mills, his campaign caught the public interest, gained momentum and ultimately forced Mills to suspend her campaign.

But Platner came with baggage of his own.

The latest furor involving Mr. Platner involves an admission that he had sent sexually explicit texts to as many as six women since he was married in 2023. His campaign previously survived uproars over a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol (he has since had it covered up) and inflammatory old Reddit posts.

It appears that people accepted Platner’s assertion that he didn’t know his trat was Nazi-like, although it has since been claimed that he was well aware of it, either at the time he got it or long before he decided to run for office, and still chose to not to do anything about it. Atop the tattoo is his seething hatred of Israel, which may well be blatant anti-Semitism rationalized under the pretext of anti-Zionism claimed by the hard left.

This presents a problem for the Democratic Party, which desperately hopes to take back the Senate.

The Platner controversy has served as a distraction from Democratic hopes to defeat Senator Susan Collins, a five-term Republican who has managed to win re-election even when Democratic presidential candidates have carried Maine.

Maine is the only state that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024 that has a competitive Senate race for a Republican-held seat. It is crucial to Democratic hopes of flipping control of the chamber in November — they need to hold all of the Democratic-held Senate seats and flip at least four controlled by Republicans to claim a majority.

The face-off arises from the need to flip Congress in the hope that it can serve as a check against Trump excesses, something the Republican majority has refused to do, confirming the appointments of a stunningly incompetent cabinet, funding Trump’s immigration and military adventurism and doing nothing to prevent Trump’s vanity and vengeance indulgences.

At the same time, Platner is a mutt, the sort of candidate who the Dems (or Reps, for that matter) should reject and refuse to accept as their candidate for dogcatcher, no less senator. The problem is that Democrat desperation to control the Senate is so strong that many on the left refuse to condemn Platner.

Indeed, they are more than happy to fabricate excuses for him and turn a blind eye to his array of failings. Sounds a lot like MAGA, right? How can you complain about the MAGA faithful, on the street or in the Senate, turning  blind eye to Trump’s failings when they do the same for their own pragmatic convenience?

Without about a week to go before the primary. Janet Mills now raises the possibility that Maine voters can still change their evil ways and vote for her. While she suspended her campaign, she remains on the ballot. Then again, it’s not as if she’s been out there, shaking hands and kissing babies, to win over voters to her cause. A candidate who can’t be bothered to campaign isn’t exactly a candidate whose earned anyone’s vote.

I share the concern that the Democrats need to take the majority in the Senate, as the Republicans have failed miserably to do their job of providing an independent check on an Executive who believes he can do whatever he pleases, and what he pleases is more likely illegal and damaging than anything else. But if Platner is the Democratic candidate for Senate from Maine, does that mean Dems should hold their nose and vote for the guy who knowingly sported a Nazi tattoo?

When the last presidential election rolled around, I joked that I would vote for dead skunk over Trump. But I really wouldn’t want a dead skunk as president. And it’s hard to imagine any reasonable person of good conscience wanting Graham Platner as a Senator. Should the voters hold their nose and vote for this mutt or risk the Democrats’ chance of winning the Senate?

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