The path to turning the Senate blue runs, in part, through the state of Maine.
Graham Platner — an oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran — hopes to lead the charge.
The anti-establishment candidate seemingly came out of nowhere to become the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Senate seat in Maine. It's a seat that Republican Susan Collins has held for nearly 30 years.
But Platner's controversial past keeps catching up with him.
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that Platner exchanged sexually explicit messages with multiple women early in his marriage. Platner married Amy Gertner in 2023.
Soon after the story was published, Gertner posted a video to X defending her husband. On Sunday he provided a statement in which he said in part, "Amy and I went through something hard — because of me. We did the work, and I'm grateful for her every hour of every day. I've learned throughout this campaign that people don't care about gossip or headlines, they care that you're fighting for their hospitals, their paycheck, their kids."
But Platner's been dogged by controversy since the start of his short but meteoric campaign.
Last fall, old, deleted Reddit posts came to light in which he made racist comments and blamed sexual assault on victims. He apologized at the time and said he'd changed. He said his posts came at the darkest time in his life when he was dealing with PTSD after multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There was also a skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi SS symbol. He said he didn't know that when he got it on a drunken night with fellow Marines in 2007. He recently covered it up.
Taken together though, these scandals raise big questions: Does Graham Platner have too much baggage to carry on? Or will his political plans — that have generated SO much enthusiasm — carry him through?
As part of our Newsmakers video podcast series, Morning Edition's Leila Fadel sat down with Platner before the weekend revelations to ask why voters, at least at the time, had chosen to forgive or turn a blind eye to his past.
"I mean, the infantry is a place of hypermasculinity. It's a place of intense violence, things that are seen as virtues," he said. "These are generally not seen as virtues in the normal world. And then I had to struggle with how do I come out of that and integrate back into society? I talked about that journey. I talked about it very, very honestly. And I think a lot of people recognize that the ability to transform, the ability to change is kind of just a normal human trait."
During the interview Platner also had choice words for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
"Pete Hegseth is literally using the U.S. military to make up for the fact that he's insecure about his own military service," Platner said. "That's insane."
Platner said his deep opposition to the Iran war comes from his time in combat.
"I know what it looks like when American-made high explosives interact with children. It's an awful thing," Platner said. "[It] stays with you the rest of your life…Just a bucket of blood that we just dumped cash into for 20 straight years. That is not making America safer. That is not protecting the interests of the average American. That is using militarism and war as an excuse for people to make profit."
Platner contrasted his own record with Hegseth's service record.
"He was a National Guard major. I mean, no shade to the National Guard at all. I was in the National Guard. But his combat record doesn't look like the combat record of a lot of other people," Platner alleged.
Hegseth's military awards include two Bronze Star Medals for meritorious service, according to the Pentagon. He was deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. NPR reached out to Secretary Hegseth for a response to Platner's criticism. We have not yet received a response.
You can hear more from Platner about his proposed policies, his party and his idea of masculinity in our full interview here.
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