Mainers are heading to the polls Tuesday in the final day of a bruising primary fight for the Democratic Senate nomination that has seen Graham Platner, a political newcomer, rise as the presumptive choice to take on Republican Susan Collins — but not without taking heavy damage from stories delving into his past.
Plainspoken populism won the oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran support among fed-up Maine voters that appeared unshaken despite months of negative press stemming from Platner’s inflammatory comments on Reddit and an ill-advised tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol. But a recent series of damaging stories in national media, including revelations in the Wall Street Journal about extramarital sexting and allegations in the New York Times of abusive behavior in past relationships, have given some voters and political observers pause. Others say that in Maine, a fiercely independent state where residents nurse a healthy suspicion of influence “from away,” Platner supporters have dismissed those stories as meddling from an establishment fearful of a political maverick.
“From what I can tell, I don’t think the Times piece moved the needle much,” said Shay Stewart-Bouley, a longtime Maine resident who has written both critically and supportively of Platner on her blog, Black Girl in Maine. “I heard some women say it made them uneasy, but I haven’t heard anyone say it changed how they’re going to vote.”
