Platner rallies in Maine after allegations ahead of Senate primary

Graham Platner pressed ahead with a campaign rally in Maine on Friday as a fresh round of allegations complicated his bid for the Senate and sharpened the scrutiny around a race he is widely seen as poised to win. The pressure comes just days before the Democratic primary, and it is landing at a moment when Platner’s challenge to longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins has become one of the party’s most closely watched opportunities to flip a seat.

The most detailed claims came from Lyndsey Fifield, who said Platner repeatedly grabbed her by the shoulders when they dated roughly a decade ago, once hard enough to leave marks. In one alleged incident, she said, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door shut. CNN described the allegations as involving unsettling and, in at least one case, physically threatening behavior toward women he dated.

Platner rejected the physical-abuse allegations in a Thursday interview on MS NOW’s All In with Chris Hayes, saying the claims were “simply not true” and calling the accuser “politically motivated.” He also denied a separate allegation involving a Marine-era chest tattoo that the Times said was a Nazi symbol, and he has since covered up the tattoo. The controversy has forced Platner to defend not only the allegations themselves, but also the story he has told about his past and judgment.

The candidate has said some of the relationships at issue took place during “the darkest time of my life,” before he received extensive therapy for combat-related PTSD. That explanation has become part of his broader effort to frame the escalating attention as a political attack on a damaged but improving candidate, rather than as evidence of disqualifying conduct. Platner has also suggested that the steady flow of damaging stories reflects an establishment threat response.

The strain on the campaign widened earlier in the week, when Platner and his wife, Amy Gertner, publicly addressed a separate sexting controversy and dismissed the attention as gossip and a distraction from health care, education, wages and the cost of living. But the sequence of revelations has only deepened unease among Democrats, who see Platner as one of the party’s strongest options against Collins and worry that what may be survivable in a primary could become a liability in a general election.