The lead strategist for former Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner said the campaign made strategic mistakes, weeks after he dropped out of the Maine race due to a rape allegation.
Platner suspended his campaign on July 8 following a Politico report in which an ex-girlfriend alleged he raped her. Prior to that allegation, Platner stayed in the race for months, amid a range of scandals. They included sexts he apologized for, saying he had worked it out with his wife; allegations reported by the New York Times that he was physically aggressive with several ex-girlfriends, which he denied; a barrage of controversial Reddit posts from years ago he said were made during struggles with PTSD following combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan; and and a Nazi-linked tattoo, which he claimed to have gotten nearly two decades ago during a drunken spree without knowing its meaning. Ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield has claimed Platner knew the tattoo’s meaning, saying he would “joke about it being a Nazi tattoo” and “call it my Totenkopf.”
