Graham Platner, a populist Democrat running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), has apologized for a series of past social media posts that included homophobic language and anti-LGBTQ slurs.
Mr. Platner, a former Marine Corps and Army veteran, currently works as an oyster farmer. The 41-year-old has attracted support from the economic populist left, advocating breaking up monopolies, curbing billionaires’ influence over elections, raising taxes on the wealthy, closing loopholes that allow people to pay less than middle-income earners and cracking down on union busting.
But Mr. Platner has also angered Democratic Party insiders by criticizing his relationships with major donors, supporting term limits in Congress and opposing U.S. funding of Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Platner describes himself as a working-class man representing disillusioned voters. But he has faced criticism for misogynistic and racist insensitive comments and for not knowing the skull and crossbones tattoo he got in 2007 after a night of drinking in Croatia was a Nazi symbol. He has since covered it up.
He’s now facing new scrutiny over homophobic posts on Reddit from 2016 to 2021, according to . defender.
Platner confirmed to the LGBTQ publication that the comments posted under the handle “P-Hustle” were his own.
“I’ve made a lot of comments over the years and talked a lot of trash on the internet,” Plattner said in a Zoom interview. defenderChristopher Wiggins. “There is no reason to doubt that at some point he used words that he would not use today,” he said, adding: “That is indefensible.”
Platner, who retired from the Army in 2012, wrote in a June 2016 Reddit thread about security guard life, “Whip that motherfucker as often as you can…Write a gay poem about how gay your job is now.”
In March 2018, Platner posted a clear explanation of what he called a “gay-off” between Marines and British sailors in Bahrain.
“When we entered Bahrain with the MEU in 2007, a Royal Navy submarine happened to be in port at the same time. … Before we knew what was going on, the other pervert just bent over and licked the damn thing from the bottom of his ballsack to the top of his dick. He stood up, looked at us like we were dead, and yelled, ‘Fuck it!’ …I proudly walked out of the team because you can’t play Gay Chicken if you’re actually gay,” Plattner wrote.
In August 2018, he used a homophobic slur during an argument with another Reddit user: “None of the people who voted against it are real veterans. Feel free to back it up with facts, asshole.”
“This was the gayest (not fun dick sucking) thing I’ve ever seen. This guy is literally everything I hate rolled into one,” Platner wrote in March 2020, insulting those who disagreed.
“I love how our gay antics make him so obnoxious that he hates us. In honor of this Air Force pussy, I’ll double down on the gay chicken next time,” Platner wrote in June 2021 in a post about the military’s “pranks.”
Platner said. defender He no longer uses anti-LGBTQ slurs like the one in the post.
“These were words I used for a long time without taking them seriously,” he said. “I stopped using those kinds of words a while ago…I now find them abhorrent, and I regret using them.”
Platner said a change of heart occurred through his friendships with LGBTQ people. While living in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a bartender, he had “some very close gay friends” and recalled attending “show tunes nights” at the popular gay bar J.R.’s.
After returning to Maine, he befriended several transgender people, which he said gave him a better understanding of the LGBTQ community and inspired him to speak out in defense of pro-LGBTQ policies at local school board meetings.
“I thought I was open-minded, but there was an element to them that I was completely unaware of,” Plattner said. defender. “That’s when I started taking more seriously the harmful nature of language, the harmful nature of even discussing whether humans exist.”
Asked whether voters should be skeptical of his judgment, Plattner said the posts reflected his past, not his current worldview.
“I think we need politics that reflects the fact that people can change and evolve,” he said. “I’m so proud of who I am. I’m so proud of who I am today. It’s all the struggles along the way that got me here. I want people to judge me for who I’ve become through all of this, not who I was at a dark point in my life.”
He said he would support LGBTQ-friendly legislation if elected, saying he would “never vote for a bill that treats LGBTQ Americans differently than other Americans” and vowing to push back against what he called the U.S. Supreme Court’s ongoing assault on equality, including LGBTQ rights.
Platner, who said he had no intention of running for office, added that those who made offensive or regrettable comments should be given time to learn and evolve.
“If we were just going to sue every comment someone makes on the internet, there would never be functioning politics,” he said. “I think the important thing is whether there is a story of change that is credible.”
The controversy over Mr. Platner highlights broader challenges for Democrats in how to deal with candidates who have made offensive or politically incorrect statements. The debate reflects a larger question about whether the party has acted too much as a moral rebuke or “cancelled” those whose views are deemed “problematic.”
At the same time, it’s unclear whether the controversy has affected Mr. Platner’s support or whether Democratic voters are willing to overlook things that would previously have been considered “red flags.”
According to University of New Hampshire PollOyster farmers hold a 58% to 24% advantage among primary voters over Gov. Janet Mills, 77, the leading candidate for Senate Democratic leadership, in a poll conducted before and after news of Mr. Platner’s Reddit post broke.
but, competing polls According to a SoCal Strategies article published after the scandal, Mills held a five-point lead over Platner in the first meeting, 41% to 36%. The result reached 30 points, 59% to 29%, after voters were informed about Mr. Plattner’s Nazi tattoo, according to the poll.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
