Graham Platner’s campaign manager quit just days after starting the job, the latest in a seemingly unending series of upsets for the Maine Democrat&#8217;s struggling campaign.
Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/10/27/graham-platner-campaign-manager">reported</a> Monday that Kevin Brown, a friend of Platner&#8217;s, resigned his post shortly after taking it up. Brown follows Platner&#8217;s political director, Genevieve McDonald, who resigned earlier this month after Platner came under fire for a series of Reddit posts in which he called himself a communist. McDonald made waves following her departure for publicly commenting about Platner’s tattoo with Nazi-era connotations, which he has since gotten covered up.
“Graham has an antisemitic tattoo on his chest,&#8221; McDonald wrote on Facebook. &#8220;He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.&#8221;
“Years ago I got a skull and crossbones tattoo with my buddies in the Marine Corps,&#8221; Platner wrote on X last week. &#8220;I was appalled to learn it closely resembled a Nazi symbol. I altered it yesterday, into something that isn&#8217;t deeply offensive to my core beliefs.&#8221;
“I am very sorry to all of you who had to contemplate a symbol of hate over the past 48 hours,” he added.
Platner told “Pod Save America” that he’s “not a secret Nazi” when discussing the Totenkopf tattoo. 
“Actually, if you read through my Reddit comments I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general. I would say, lifelong opponent.”
Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to <a href="http://dailywire.com/Subscribe">DailyWire.com/Subscribe</a> to join now. 
“At no point in this entire experience of my life not once did anybody say ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’ It never came up, until we got wind that in the opposition research somebody was shopping the idea that I was secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo. And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I have not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years,” Platner said. 
“We got those and then we all moved on with our lives,” he added. 
However, a report in<a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2025/10/graham-platner-ss-tattoo-maine-senate/"> Jewish Insider</a> indicated he knew about the meaning of the symbol as of at least 2012. 
Platner is facing Maine Governor Janet Mills in the state&#8217;s Democratic primary, the winner of which will likely take on Republican Senator Susan Collins in a highly competitive general election race.
A recent poll of likely voters from SoCal Strategies indicated that Mills is leading with 41% compared with 36% for Platner,<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5573485-maine-senate-poll-mills-platner/"> The Hill</a> reported on Saturday. Another poll from the<a href="https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1896&amp;context=survey_center_polls"> University of New Hampshire</a>, taken from Oct. 16-21, showed that 58% of “those who plan to vote” are backing Platner, compared with 24% for the governor.

Graham Platner Maine

The Bad News Keeps Rolling In For Graham Platner’s Senate Campaign

graham platner

janet mills

Maine

Susan Collins

Bernie Sanders let the cat out of the bag yesterday.
In an interview with <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/10/23/bernie-sanders-aoc-2028-presidential-election">Axios</a>, he said what I think we&#8217;ve all been thinking: that AOC is almost certainly going to run for president in 2028 — with the backing of Bernie Sanders.
<blockquote>“She is an incredibly intelligent person and in the best sense of the word, a very, very good politician,” he declared. “I&#8217;ve been out on the streets where the people come up and how she responds to people is so incredibly genuine and open, you know, it&#8217;s just something. That&#8217;s a gift that she has. It&#8217;s a quality that she has. She&#8217;s a great speaker out there. She comes from the working class. She was a kid who was cleaning houses with her mother. She knows what it&#8217;s like not to have any money. And she&#8217;s going out fighting for working families all over this country. And I think as a young person who six years ago was a waitress, becoming politically prominent has been incredibly inspiring.”</blockquote>
She&#8217;s not inspiring.
To the wild Left, however, she is inspiring.
Sure, she is a dunderhead who says unintelligent things every five seconds.
But Bernie Sanders is also a dunderhead, and he&#8217;s been able to get away with it for 2,000 decades at this point. I believe he was a contemporaneous follower of Methuselah.
Sanders has taken over the Democratic Party wholesale at this point.
They are moving further and further to the Left. And one of his chosen acolytes is Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat running for the Senate who leads in the polls by leaps and bounds.
According to new <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/maine-senate-candidate-graham-platner-socialist-group-linked-to-ice-attack-tesla-bombings?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=24&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Maine+Dem+Graham+Platner+Belonged+To+Socialist+Group+Linked+To+ICE+Attack%2C+Tesla+Bombings">reporting</a> from our own Luke Rosiak:
<blockquote>Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner was a member of a radical Left group whose members have been linked to a slew of attacks, including an assault on an ICE facility that was designated a terrorist attack this month as part of a crackdown on Antifa.
Maine’s Democrat Senate primary was upended after <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/16/politics/kfile-graham-platner-maine-senate-candidate-deleted-reddit-posts">CNN</a> reported that Platner had called himself a “communist” in posts on the Reddit forum r/SocialistRA, where he wrote that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”
The forum name refers to the Socialist Rifle Association, a group whose members have been repeatedly linked to violent political crimes.
On July 4, a group of militants allegedly swarmed law enforcement at an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas and “opened fire at the unarmed DHS correctional officers.” One of them, Benjamin Hanil Song, is charged with shooting a police officer in the neck. Song was a member of the Socialist Rifle Association’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, a fellow group member told <a href="https://www.keranews.org/news/2025-07-22/shooting-at-alvarado-ice-facility-other-attacks-the-new-normal">KERA</a>.
Last week, the Department of Justice charged two suspects in that attack, Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts, with providing <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-hits-antifa-with-very-first-terrorism-charges-in-anti-ice-attack">material support to terrorists</a>, calling their crew an “Antifa Cell.” It was the first use of the terrorism statute against domestic extremists since Trump ordered a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-ups-the-ante-orders-cabinet-to-label-antifa-a-foreign-terror-organization">crackdown</a> on far-left political violence. Arnold, like the founders of the Socialist Rifle Association, is transgender and goes by the name Autumn Hill.
Membership in the Socialist Rifle Association isn’t required for users to post on the Reddit forum. But a New England publication, the <a href="https://robinsonreport.substack.com/p/ex-marine-graham-platner-taught-military">Robinson Report</a>, revealed that Platner explicitly described his membership in the group.
“Check out the Maine SRA chapter, we’re quite active,” he wrote in April 2020. In August 2020, he said “my local SRA chapter” does “lots of range days, firearms education classes, and developing mutual aid networks in our community.”</blockquote>
Images of the main chapter include a man training in a pink tutu shooting a gun, and one who has facial hair matching Platner’s.
This is a person, a Nazi-tattooed Antifa-training pseudo-man-of-the-people oyster farmer, who went to a $75,000-a-year prep school when he was younger.
And he’s Sanders’ chosen guy in the Senate race in Maine. If the Democrats wish to embrace this sort of radicalism, I do not think the American people will move alongside them.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2303-i-m-shocked-shocked-to-find-nba-gambling-going-on?elementPosition=2&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
I know there are a lot of Republicans who are rooting for the socialists to take over the Democratic Party.
I am not.
I&#8217;ve been saying this since 2020, when Bernie Sanders was running against Joe Biden. I said I preferred Joe Biden to be the nominee rather than Bernie Sanders, even if Bernie was more likely to lose to Donald Trump.
Why? Because the risk factor in having a socialist leader was higher than the risk factor in having a “dead” leader like Joe Biden.
Even if Joe Biden had slightly higher odds to win the presidency than Bernie Sanders, if I had to calculate the damage that a Bernie Sanders presidency would do versus a Joe Biden presidency, it would be astronomically higher under Bernie Sanders than Joe Biden, no matter how bad Joe Biden was.
I feel the same way about the Democratic Party falling wholesale to the wild-Left democratic socialists. If they do that, it’s true there&#8217;s a lower chance that they will win power anytime soon.
But to pretend that chance doesn&#8217;t exist is to whistle past the graveyard.
Let&#8217;s say, for example, that the Democratic Party has a 40% shot of winning the White House in 2028 right now with some sort of pseudo-moderate, like a Gavin Newsom or a Wes Moore. And let&#8217;s say they have a 30% shot of winning the White House with a clear, insane socialist like AOC at the top of the ticket.
The damage that would be done by Wes Moore or Gavin Newsom would be a seven out of ten, and the damage done by an AOC would be a ten out of ten.
I would rather take the low-risk scenario, even if there&#8217;s a greater risk that the person might become president, than take the absolutely disastrous apocalyptic scenario of having a Democratic party controlled by the nutjobs.
This is why the rise of the Zohran Mamdani Left is truly, truly troubling.
* * *
Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to <a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/">DailyWire.com/Subscribe</a> to join now.

Bernie Sanders And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Hold “Fighting Oligarchy” Rally In L.A.

Sanders Backs AOC For 2028. The Radical Left’s Grip On Democrats Tightens.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Ben Shapiro

Bernie Sanders

Democrats

Leftists

Opinion

Zohran Mamdani

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner was reportedly aware of the Nazi-affiliation of his skull and crossbones chest tattoo, despite recent claims that he had never faced negative accusations regarding it until he ran for office, according to Jewish Insider.
“He said, ‘Oh, this is my Totenkopf,’” an acquaintance recalls Platner telling him at Tune Inn, a Capitol Hill Bar where Platner worked, in 2012.
“He said it in a cutesy little way,” the individual said. Platner said at the time that he was aware of what the symbol meant when he got the tattoo, though he has denied knowing the meaning at other times, <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2025/10/graham-platner-ss-tattoo-maine-senate/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jewish Insider</a> reported. Platner has since gotten a new tattoo to cover the symbol, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Graham Platner shows off cover-up tattoo of Nazi symbol in interview with local Maine news outlet: <a href="https://t.co/MMPvw57zzz">https://t.co/MMPvw57zzz</a> <a href="https://t.co/JaUYLjuM41">pic.twitter.com/JaUYLjuM41</a>
— Politics &amp; Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) <a href="https://twitter.com/PollTracker2024/status/1981027114796134407?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> 
The report came after Platner attempted to explain the tattoo on “Pod Save America” on Monday.
“I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner said on the podcast. “Actually, if you read through my Reddit comments I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general. I would say, lifelong opponent.”
Platner, who has been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), further added that he was “very inebriated” on leave in Croatia while on a deployment for the Marines in 2007, and “we chose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall” while at the tattoo shop.
“We got those and then we all moved on with our lives,” he said.
Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to <a href="http://dailywire.com/Subscribe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DailyWire.com/Subscribe</a> to join now.
“At no point in this entire experience of my life not once did anybody say ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’ It never came up, until we got wind that in the opposition research somebody was shopping the idea that I was secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo. And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I have not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years,” Platner continued.
Platner has been under fire since a number of his Reddit posts were revealed, including one where he referred to cops as “bastards” and described himself as a “communist.”
Axios reported that in a 2020 Reddit post Platner said he had the term “antifa super soldier” on “armor” he owned.
His former political director, Genevieve McDonald, who quit just days ago, called him out in a Facebook post in light of the tattoo scandal.
“Graham has an antisemitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means,” McDonald wrote, The Maine Wire reported.
Platner is currently facing Democrat Governor Janet Mills in a primary, the winner of which will face incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, in a closely watched 2026 race.

Capitol Hill Prepares Ahead Of Full House Vote On Impeachment Articles This Week

Graham Platner Has Known About His Tattoo’s Nazi Connotations Since 2012

Senate

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner addressed a tattoo on his chest that critics have slammed as being linked to Nazi imagery, as a flurry of controversial social media posts resurfaced.
In a Monday interview with “Pod Save America,” Platner encouraged the hosts to play a video of himself lip-syncing to Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” while shirtless at his brother’s wedding a decade ago. The video revealed that Platner has a tattoo of a black skull and crossbones on his chest. The design is known as the Totenkopf or “Death’s Head,” which was used as a symbol for the SS during the Nazi regime, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner told Pod Save America. “Actually, if you read through my Reddit comments I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general. I would say, lifelong opponent.”
Platner explained that he got the tattoo while on deployment as a Marine while “very inebriated” on leave in Croatia, and “we chose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall” at the tattoo parlor.
“We got those and then we all moved on with our lives,” he added, saying that he was screened without issues when he later joined the Army, obtained security clearance, and worked as a State Department contractor without issue.
Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to <a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DailyWire.com/Subscribe</a> to join now.
“And I’ve also just lived my entire life like a regular person with a skull and crossbones on their chest,” he said, joking about the “Wrecking Ball” clip.
“At no point in this entire experience of my life not once did anybody say ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’ It never came up, until we got wind that in the opposition research somebody was shopping the idea that I was secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo. And I can honestly say that if I was trying to hide it, I have not been doing a very good job for the past 18 years,” he added.
The tattoo received some negative responses from critics on social media, including on the Left.
“No skeletons in his closet, just an apparent Nazi logo on his chest,” MSNBC anchor Catherine Rampell posted to X.
“Gonna be hard to erase this one, literally and figuratively,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
Platner is currently in a primary against Maine’s Democratic Governor, Janet Mills. The winner of that race will face incumbent Senator Susan Collins (R) in one of the most competitive races in the country. Various old Reddit posts of his resurfaced last week, including “I got older and became a communist.”
“The fact that I have managed to go from Communist to Nazi in the space of four days, according to the people who are trying to, whatever, do this to me, I find to be quite a spectacular turn of events,” Platner added in the podcast interview.
Other posts included him saying that, “Bastards. Cops are bastards. All of them, in fact.” The candidate has attempted to turn the tables on the news cycle, sharing other past Reddit posts condemning “misogyny and homophobia in the Marines,” he wrote in a recent X post.
Last week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee torched the posts from Platner.
“Graham Platner is a communist who supports violence against Republicans to promote his radical agenda. These posts are not just him messing around on the internet as he is trying to claim, they paint a very dark picture of a candidate not fit for office,” Samantha Cantrell, NRSC Regional Press Secretary, told The Daily Wire at the time.
The Daily Wire reached out to Platner’s campaign for comment.

Maine Senate Candidate Downplays SS Skull Tattoo: ‘I Am Not A Secret Nazi.’

Congress

Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is under scrutiny for a series of resurfaced social media posts in which he declares himself a “communist” and denigrates cops and white people.
CNN’s KFile uncovered the Reddit posts from Platner, who is facing off against Gov. Janet Mills in the Democratic primary, the winner of which will take on Republican Senator Susan Collins.
“I got older and became a communist,” Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer, wrote on a Reddit forum dubbed “antiwork” in 2021, according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/16/politics/kfile-graham-platner-maine-senate-candidate-deleted-reddit-posts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CNN</a>. He also said he was a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking social these days” in a United States Marine Corps subreddit that same year, saying that he “still got the guns though, I don’t trust the facsists [sic] these days,” citing his past military experience in the post.
“Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are,” the Democrat said about white Americans.
“Bastards. Cops are bastards. All of them, in fact,” Platner said in another post.
<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/16/maine-senate-candidate-promoted-violent-political-action-in-since-deleted-online-posts-00613037" target="_blank" rel="noopener">POLITICO</a> reported that Platner wrote other Reddit posts in 2018 suggesting that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice” and said that a “good semi-automatic rifle” would be expected in order to successfully “fight fascism.”
In addition, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/17/graham-platner-sexual-assault-comments-senate-midterms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Washington Post</a> reported multiple posts he made to Reddit in 2013 regarding sexual assault, including in the military.
“Rape is a real thing. If you’re so worried about it to buy Kevlar underwear you’d think you might not get blacked out f***ed up around people you aren’t comfortable with,” he wrote.
“In today’s current climate, when every whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a feature length film, anyone who actually thinks the military is purposefully covering up rape to save the career of some god damn [captain], is clearly both an idiot and junior enough in rank or life experience to think it matters,” Platner wrote.
<a href="https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/10/17/politics/elections/graham-platner-black-people-tipping-rape-reference-reddit-posts/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bangor Daily News</a> on Friday uncovered more of Platner’s Reddit posts, from 2013, in which he calls black people cheap.
“I work as a bartender and it always amazes me how solid this stereotype is,” Platner wrote. “Every now and again a black patron will leave a 15-20% tip, but usually it [is] between 0-5%. There’s got to be a reason behind it, what is it?”
The candidate said that the posts circulating do not reflect who he is today.
“As I told CNN, I was f***ing around on the internet at a time when I felt lost and very disillusioned with our government who sent me overseas to watch my friends die,” Platner told POLITICO. “I made dumb jokes and picked fights. But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired s***poster.”
However, Republicans have raised concerns about the candidate’s past comments.
“Graham Platner is a communist who supports violence against Republicans to promote his radical agenda. These posts are not just him messing around on the internet as he is trying to claim, they paint a very dark picture of a candidate not fit for office,” Samantha Cantrell, NRSC Regional Press Secretary, told The Daily Wire in response to the reports on the Democrat.
The Daily Wire reached out to the Platner campaign for comment.

Reddit

Dem Senate Hopeful Called Himself A Communist, Made Racist Comments In Reddit Posts