Category: Graham platner
Not Going Down With the Ship: Graham Platner’s Treasurer Resigns, Becoming Fourth Senior Official To Flee Scandal-Plagued Campaign in a Matter of Weeks
Embattled Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s treasurer has resigned, becoming the fourth person to flee Platner’s campaign in little over a month as reports broke of the candidate’s racist and anti-police social media posts and Nazi tattoo.
The post Not Going Down With the Ship: Graham Platner’s Treasurer Resigns, Becoming Fourth Senior Official To Flee Scandal-Plagued Campaign in a Matter of Weeks appeared first on .
2 more staffers ditch Graham Platner’s troubled Senate campaign amid Nazi, communism scandals
Graham Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and Marine veteran, announced on Aug. 19 that he was running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Maine. His stated objective was to challenge the “oligarchy,” meaning both the Democrat establishment and the Republican incumbent, Sen. Susan Collins.
At the outset, Platner’s campaign appeared to have incredible momentum. The leftist candidate raised several million dollars in a matter of weeks, managed to land endorsements from current lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M), and struck a chord with locals, as reflected in early polls indicating that he had a sizeable lead over Democrat Gov. Janet Mills.
Platner’s campaign has, however, encountered a massive and potentially insurmountable obstacle: his radical past.
‘Platner is not a victim of opposition research. … Accountability does not exist in playing the victim of your own behavior.’
In the wake of damning revelations about the leftist candidate’s social media posts and his newly concealed tattoo of a skull image similar to that popularized by Adolf Hitler’s SS elite Nazi guard, at least four key staffers have jumped ship.
The latest individuals to call it quits are the campaign’s national finance director, Ronald Holmes, and its treasurer, Victoria Perrone.
Holmes, a Democrat operative who previously served as finance director on New York Democrat Rep. Josh Riley’s congressional campaign, resigned on Friday, suggesting that Platner’s campaign no longer met his “standards.”
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Graham Platner. Photo by Sophie Park/Getty Images
“I joined this campaign because I believed in building something different — a campaign of fresh energy, integrity, and reform-minded thinking in a political system that often resists exactly those things,” Holmes wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “Somewhere along the way, I began to feel that my professional standards as a campaign professional no longer fully aligned with those of the campaign.”
A campaign spokesperson told Politico, “Ron helped the campaign reach out to big-dollar donors, and we appreciated his efforts. But the reality is our campaign’s fundraising success has come largely from small-dollar donors.”
“Nearly 90% of what we’ve raised has come from small-dollar donations and online donors, which has been and [continues] to be run by our digital fundraising director,” added the spokesperson.
Timothy Facciola of the Judge Street Journal on Substack revealed on Sunday that Holmes wasn’t the only Platner staffer to pack it in last week.
Citing a Federal Election Commission form that was filed on Friday as well as an unnamed source said to be familiar with the matter, Facciola reported that Perrone, the president and founder of the consulting firm Spruce Street Compliance, resigned as treasurer on Tuesday.
Ben Martello — a political strategist who served as an adviser to former Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.) — appears to have stepped into the role.
Blaze News has reached out to Perrone and the Platner campaign for comment.
Perrone, who has been closely involved with Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign, was apparently hired last month to help Platner’s campaign deal with its various scandals.
According to Politico, Perrone was the individual who pressed members of Platner’s campaign team to sign non-disclosure agreements after his Reddit posts came to light — including posts in which he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested service members worried about being raped should buy “Kevlar underwear,” and smeared all police officers as “bastards.”
Former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald (D) resigned as political director of Platner’s campaign last month over the posts, noting, “These statements were not known to me when I agreed to join the campaign, and they are not words or values I can stand behind in a candidate for the United States Senate.”
Within days of McDonald’s resignation, footage went viral revealing that Platner had an apparent “totenkopf” tattoo on his chest — the symbol of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, the branch that guarded the Nazi concentration camps.
Amid the fallout over the apparent Nazi tattoo, the Democrat candidate’s longtime friend Kevin Brown similarly jumped ship.
Brown, who took over as Platner’s campaign manager on Oct. 21, announced days later that he was leaving, suggesting that the move was the result of new familial demands on his time.
Brown said in a statement obtained by WGME-TV, “Graham is a dear friend. I started this campaign Tuesday but found out Friday we have a baby on the way.”
“Graham deserves someone who is 100% in on his race, and we want to lean into this new experience as a family, so it was best we step back sooner than later so Graham can get the manager he deserves,” Brown added.
Platner reportedly suggested during a town hall last week that the Democratic Party was the cause of his recent run of bad luck, stating, “I’m running as a Democrat still, despite the fact my party is destroying my life.”
“Platner is not a victim of opposition research. This is what happens when you run for federal office,” Genevieve McDonald said in a recent statement. “People scrutinize everything you’ve ever done. Every word and every action. Accountability does not exist in playing the victim of your own behavior.”
McDonald added, “We should not be having a debate about Nazi symbolism tattooed on the potentially top-ticket Democrat in Maine. The fact we are even willing to entertain it shows desperation within the party, not dedication, and how far we have fallen from rational thought.”
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Rich Kid Graham Platner Calls To Make Billionaires Extinct
PORTLAND, Maine—Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, the grandson of a world-famous architect known for “opulent” designs who attended an elite Connecticut prep school, said billionaires should be “extinct.”
The post Rich Kid Graham Platner Calls To Make Billionaires Extinct appeared first on .
‘Baby on the Way’: Platner’s New Campaign Manager Quits 3 Days Into Job, Citing Pregnant Wife
Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s campaign manager resigned after just three days on the job, citing his wife’s pregnancy and his desire to “lean into this new experience as a family.”
The post ‘Baby on the Way’: Platner’s New Campaign Manager Quits 3 Days Into Job, Citing Pregnant Wife appeared first on .
‘Baby on the Way’: Platner’s New Campaign Manager Quits 3 Days Into Job, Citing Pregnant Wife
Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s campaign manager resigned after just three days on the job, citing his wife’s pregnancy and his desire to “lean into this new experience as a family.”
The post ‘Baby on the Way’: Platner’s New Campaign Manager Quits 3 Days Into Job, Citing Pregnant Wife appeared first on .
Second key staffer leaves campaign of Democratic Senate candidate embroiled in Nazi, communism controversies
Graham Platner, the Maine-based oyster farmer running as a Democrat to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins, has lost a great deal more in recent days than his sizeable lead over Gov. Janet Mills in the polls.
Just days after former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald resigned as political director of Platner’s campaign, the Democratic candidate’s longtime friend Kevin Brown indicated he too was jumping ship, leaving the role of campaign manager open.
‘Graham deserves someone who is 100% in on his race.’
Earlier this month, numerous damning posts previously made by Platner on Reddit came to light — including posts where he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested service members worried about being raped should buy “Kevlar underwear,” joked about homosexuals, promoted political violence, and smeared all police officers as “bastards.”
McDonald promptly resigned as the political director of Platner’s campaign over the posts, noting, “These statements were not known to me when I agreed to join the campaign, and they are not words or values I can stand behind in a candidate for the United States Senate.”
Shortly after Platner apologized for his past remarks on Reddit, footage went viral revealing that he had an apparent “totenkopf” tattoo on his chest — a skull image popularized by Adolf Hitler’s SS elite guard and adopted as the symbol of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, the branch that guarded the concentration camps.
While Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and — according to a recent poll — the majority of young Democrats recently indicated that they will stick with Platner despite his incendiary posts and apparent Nazi tattoo, Brown, a Democratic operative who worked on Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s failed presidential campaign, has revealed he is jumping ship.
Brown indicated that the move, first reported by Axios, was the result of new familial demands on his time.
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Photo by Sophie Park/Getty Images
Brown said in a statement obtained by WGME-TV, “Graham is a dear friend. I started this campaign Tuesday but found out Friday we have a baby on the way.”
“Graham deserves someone who is 100% in on his race, and we want to lean into this new experience as a family, so it was best we step back sooner than later so Graham can get the manager he deserves,” Brown added.
Brown’s departure comes just after the Platner campaign reportedly began sending nondisclosure agreements to staffers.
McDonald told Politico that the campaign offered her $15,000 to sign an NDA, but the campaign suggested this amount was a severance payment.
A spokesperson for the campaign indicated that the consulting firm Spruce Street was recently hired to “take over campaign compliance to institute standard practices that had yet to be put into place. Some of those standards had to be instituted retroactively, but as a matter of course we do not require anyone previously involved in the campaign to do so,” apparently referring to signing an NDA.
Blaze News has reached out to Platner’s campaign for comment.
A SoCal Strategies Maine poll of 500 likely Democratic primary voters conducted October 21-25 found that Mills, who officially jumped into the race on Oct. 14, holds a 5-point lead over Platner, 41%-36%.
Prior to the news of Platner’s alleged Nazi tattoo — which the Mainer recently had inked over with supposed Celtic imagery — a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll indicated that among those who plan to vote in the 2026 state Democratic primary, 58% of respondents said they would support him, and only 24% said they would support Mills.
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Democratic Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner’s New Campaign Manager Lasts Less Than A Week
‘I did used to love America’
