The Democrats are really reaching into the bottom of the barrel in a desperate search for political candidates these days. The daily headlines have this column almost writing itself.
In the Commonwealth of Virginia, we have the recent revelations of Democratic candidate for attorney general, Jay Jones, sending text messages to a colleague in 2022 wishing that someone would put “two bullets” in the head of then-Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates, Todd Gilbert. Jones went on to say that Gilbert and his wife were raising their two toddlers to be “little fascists,” that Gilbert was a “POS” whose grave he wished to “piss on,” and that he wished one of Gilbert’s children would die in his mother’s arms. He could be my state’s next chief law enforcement officer.
Then, in the state of New Jersey, we have Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Michelle “Mikie” Sherrill facing questions over the circumstances of the discipline she received while a Naval Academy midshipman, which reportedly prevented her from walking with her class at graduation. Ms. Sherrill, who serves as a congresswoman from New Jersey, apparently graduated from Annapolis and went on to serve as a Navy helicopter pilot.
Her military service was honorable, and perhaps whatever her infraction was — apparently a cheating scandal involving a number of midshipmen on an engineering exam — should not be disqualifying for the governorship. However, the voters of New Jersey are entitled to make that decision based on a full airing of the evidence. To date, Sherrill has refused to release her disciplinary records from the Academy, which would go a long way toward clearing the air. As they say in Washington, it’s not the crime – it’s the cover-up. As long as she refuses to release the records, the issue remains a cancer on her campaign.
Ms. Sherrill had to have known that this issue lurking in her background would likely come back to haunt her campaign for governor, given the harsh light of a gubernatorial election in a major state. Perhaps her prior successful campaigns for Congress convinced her the Academy scandal was behind her. The opposition research, however, for the governorship of the Garden State, which has been hotly contested in recent years, is likely much more robust than the one in a less well-funded congressional contest.
Another Democratic candidate for a powerful seat is in the glare of the Klieg lights. This time it is Bernie Sanders-endorsed Marine Corps veteran Graham Platner, who is vying for the Democratic nomination to replace the U.S. senator from Maine, Susan Collins, in that state’s 2026 Senate race.
Mr. Platner was discovered to have posted a number of things on Reddit that haven’t aged very well. When you’re running in a statewide race to be Maine’s next U.S. senator, for example, it’s probably best not to have posted online that rural Mainers are “actually” racist and stupid, as the Washington Post reported Mr. Platner to have written in 2020.
The Post also reported that Mr. Platner had described himself as a “Communist” on the Reddit platform. Now, I know that the Democratic Party’s “New Left” has taken a hard turn toward Karl Marx, but even New York’s radical mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, tries to distance himself from the Communist label. I can’t imagine that the denizens of the Pine Tree State are ready to embrace a self-avowed Communist.
But things really veered toward darkness when it was revealed that Mr. Platner had the famed Nazi symbol of a skull-and-bones known as the Totenkopf (Death’s Head) tattooed on his chest. In what had to be one of the most disingenuous political spin jobs ever, Mr. Platner claimed not to have realized it was a Nazi symbol when he was in the Corps and had himself inked while in Croatia with some buddies. Problem is, Mr. Platner reportedly told a friend in D.C. ten years ago, “Oh, this is my Totenkopf.” Even Platner’s former political director, Genevieve MacDonald, who resigned last week over the disaster, said, “He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff.”
Even worse than the political spin was perhaps the worst tattoo clean-up job ever, in which Mr. Platner had some shlock tattoo artist stick some legs and a dog’s head on the skull, now telling Vanity Fair the tattoo is “a Celtic knot with a dog.” Okaaayyyy… As my brother, Jim, hilariously said to me, it looks like a tick that was irradiated at Chernobyl.
Get a lot of popcorn as the Democratic Party scrambles to field candidates over the next year or two. The party is in a bad way and scraping the barrel’s bottom. Several decades ago, I was an investigator for a prominent D.C. investigative firm that was hired by politicians to do opposition research on their opponents. One prominent Democrat considering a run for president had us do a self-due diligence of him in which I was involved. Smart man. Always know what the opposition can find out about you before the opposition does. Our client didn’t run for the presidency.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for 39 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has been a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times, The Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. His work has been featured on CBS News' 48 Hours and NBC News' Dateline. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)
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