Politics
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Graham Platner will headline a Labor Day rally in Ellsworth next month.
Platner will speak at the rally, slated for noon on Sept. 7 outside Ellsworth City Hall, about the history of unions and the role organized labor plays in communities across the country, according to notices from the Hancock County Democratic Committee.
The Sullivan oyster farmer has maintained a lower profile since dropping out of the U.S. Senate race against Republican Susan Collins following a rape accusation from an ex-girlfriend.
That accusation sent Democrats scrambling to distance themselves from Platner back in July, barely a month after he secured the party’s nomination during the June primaries.
The Labor Day event is being hosted by Hancock County Activists, a progressive group that often holds events with others like it in the region. The county party promoted the event on Thursday, although an Instagram post was taken down roughly two hours after it began circulating. The event was still listed on the county committee’s website before noon.
Platner’s record vote-getting win in June’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary came despite a barrage of negative press since last fall when his deleted posts on the website Reddit became public, including inflammatory statements about rural white Americans, Black people and women, and comments dismissive of women’s fears about rape.
Then it came out that Platner had a chest tattoo of a skull over crossbones resembling a symbol adopted by the Nazi SS during World War II. Platner denied knowing the meaning of the tattoo, which he got in 2007 while deployed abroad with the U.S. Marines. He has since had it covered.
His chances for clinching the nomination seemed at risk just days ahead of the primary when the Wall Street Journal reported that he had exchanged sexually explicit texts with other women early in his marriage to Amy Gertner, who disclosed those messages to his campaign shortly after its launch, and then a New York Times story wherein his ex-girlfriends described volatile and toxic behavior, including instances of physical intimidation.
Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson has replaced Platner as the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate on the November ballot.