The controversial Graham Platner is now the projected winner in the Maine Senate Democrat primary and will go on to face Republican Susan Collins in the November mid-terms.
The Associated Press called the race for Platner on Tuesday, though it will likely take a few days to know his exact margin of victory.
“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner said during his acceptance speech in Blue Hill. “And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it.”
Platner’s victory comes less than a week after several women who previously dated him said he engaged in “unsettling” and controversial behavior during their relationship. The New York Times profiled several women who shared a romantic past with Platner, further piling onto the controversies that have plagued the candidate since discussions about his Nazi tattoo. In one interview, conservative commentator Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner between 2013 and 2015, said that he would often be rough with her while discussing violence, clarifying that he never physically assaulted her.
“He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” Fifield told the outlet.
She also alleged that Platner once handled an argument between them by twisting “her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was ‘calm.’”
Regarding his Nazi tattoo, Fifield also expressed doubt as to Platner’s claims of being ignorant of its meaning, saying that he would sometimes describe it as “my Totenkopf.” Jewish Insider previously reported that a former acquaintance described him using that term.
At least two other women who dated Platner said he would engage in “patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing.” Maine Democrat Jenny Raciot, for instance, described his behavior as “reckless” and “unsettling” during their relationship between 2019 and 2021.
