Tipsheet

Oh, Maine Dem Senate Candidate Also Trained With an Antifa-like Rifle Group?

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  October 24, 2025 6:55 AM

Was there any vetting of this guy? Within a little over two months, the Maine Senate campaign of Democrat Graham Platner has imploded. That doesn’t happen if someone did their homework on this guy. The media didn’t take long to find out that he’s the very definition of unelectable, if we’re going by Democrat rules, and beyond troubling for anyone else. So much so that you’d want him to stay away—the man admitted to having gotten Nazi tattoos, and Politico revealed that more details are coming: 

Platner is the latest example. A military veteran turned oysterman who looked the hirsute part, the Mainer’s populist candidacy seemed to be an immaculate conception. The contributions piled up, the profiles were published and then suddenly there was a disruption to the formula. Or maybe it was more of an acceleration. 

Once his Democratic rival, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, entered the race, Platner was hit with a nor’easter of oppo research that had the added value of being his own damning words. Rationalizing political violence, calling himself a “communist,” referring to all police as “bastards” and calling himself an “antifa supersoldier,” Platner’s paper trail was the stuff of Senator Susan Collins’s dreams. And that was before Platner tried to get ahead of the next hit by revealing the apparent Nazi tattoo on his naked torso. 

There is more to come, I’m told by sources very familiar with the Platner opposition file who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And some of it will be even more localized, which will make for ready-made targeted mail and digital ads from his opponent 

I’ve learned, for example, that in 2020, Platner went online and called the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office a den of “overweight pansies” and flatly said: “cops are opportunistic cowards.” 

You can guess how many Mainers in and around Hancock County, a rural region outside its summer resort enclaves, are related to or friends with law enforcement officers there. 

Platner did not respond to a request for a comment. 

He also might be linked to an Antifa-like rifle club, and he’s just been busted posting homophobic slurs on Reddit posts: 

Anti-gay, pro-Nazi, and pals around with a bunch of proto-domestic terrorists—what a keeper.