Graham Platner’s campaign is cratering under a stack of troubling revelations: a Nazi tattoo, online posts mocking veterans, sexting accusations and reports of abusive behavior toward women, even as Senate Democrats circle to protect him. The reporting, including extensive interviews with several former partners, raises serious questions about judgment, honesty and fitness for public office.

Platner’s public image has unraveled fast. What started as embarrassing online posts and a tattoo controversy has grown into allegations of sustained poor behavior, including graphic posts on Reddit and a sexting scandal that leaked into public view. He also reportedly used Kik, a platform critics say can harbor predators, which further complicates the narrative around his judgment.

Much of the blowback has been amplified by Democratic opposition research, which is now being used by Senate Democrats as cover to keep him in the race. That political defense is striking: a party that claims to stand for women’s safety is defending a candidate facing multiple allegations about how he treated women. The New York Times reported that Platner’s lawyers delayed publication of some reporting, and that reporting surfaced a series of damning interviews and documents.

https://x.com/LevineJonathan/status/2062169312773718420

Rumors were spreading from Portland to the Potomac about Mr. Platner’s messy personal life, after news reports that he had sent sexual messages to women while married. Democratic senators were pressing him about whether more damaging revelations were coming. Journalists were swarming, staking out his hometown.

Amid the turmoil, Mr. Platner worked the phones, rolling through calls to ex-girlfriends who might publicly acknowledge that while he may have been a bad boyfriend, he was, in fact, a decent guy.

In interviews with The New York Times on Wednesday, several women did just that, describing Mr. Platner as a fun and caring partner, and saying they felt safe with him. Some remain friends with him to this day, years after their relationships ended.

But in extensive conversations over the past two months, three other women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner offered a far more complicated assessment, describing volatile and “toxic” relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.

Mr. Platner could be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but also demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful.

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Lyndsey Fifield, 40, a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns, recalled him as “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness.’” Ms. Fifield, who dated Mr. Platner from roughly 2013 to 2015, said that his offensive online posts “reminded me of just how much he hated women.

Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, who said she dated him casually off and on between 2019 and 2021, said the posts deepened her belief that he did not respect women. “When I saw the old comments that he made online,” she said, “I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.”

Some of the women also raised questions about his trustworthiness. Mr. Platner’s insistence that he did not know that his tattoo was a Nazi symbol until it became a campaign issue last fall was simply not true, Ms. Fifield said. After all, she said, he had taught her the word for it years earlier, referring to it as “my Totenkopf.”

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This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen people, including six women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner. The Times spoke with friends or acquaintances of several of the women, reviewed contemporaneous text and social media messages and saw some of Ms. Fifield’s diary entries. Mr. Platner declined to be interviewed for this article.

The women who described difficult relationships with Mr. Platner knew him at different points of his life. Ms. Fifield said she dated him starting when they were both in their late 20s in Washington, during a time Mr. Platner has described as challenging. Ms. Racicot knew him in Maine when they were in their mid-30s and he was living in Sullivan, Maine, and working on his oyster farm.

The third woman, a Democrat from Maine who spoke on the condition of anonymity, had a long-distance relationship with Mr. Platner on and off for years, as recently as 2016.

The three described him in similar terms. Spending time with him could be exhilarating, they said. But they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing. Asked to sum up how he treated her, the third woman said she felt like “collateral damage to the world that is his.”

All of this lands on the basic question of integrity, which voters care about even if politicians often don’t. Platner’s numbers have slipped in internal polling since the sexting stories surfaced, which makes the decision by Senate Democrats to rally around him politically dangerous and tone-deaf. Defending a candidate with a Nazi tattoo and accusations of emotional abuse is not a defensible long-term strategy for any party serious about holding power.

Democratic leaders are boxed in. Force him out and they admit a massive vetting failure. Keep him in and they appear to tolerate behavior that would sink a less-connected politician. That political calculation has real risks for voters and for the party’s credibility heading into the midterms.

Some former partners say Platner knew what that tattoo meant well before his campaign made it an issue. Those accounts undercut his public explanations and raise questions about candor and accountability. The same women who described charm and care in some moments also recounted demeaning behavior and repeated dishonesty.

Mr. Platner, she said, knew when they were dating years ago that the tattoo was a Nazi symbol, and that he called it “my Totenkopf.”

“I would never have known what that was,” she said. “He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo.”

Ms. Fifield said he told her that he and other members of his unit selected the tattoo because “they were like a death unit, they were killers,” and saw a parallel between their unit and the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or S.S., unit, that used the skull-and-crossbones image.

“They literally, deliberately, selected it because it was relevant to their military unit,” she said.

More disturbing are the reported comments about sexual violence that former partners say were framed as power and dominance rather than sexual desire. When a campaign declines to dispute those recollections, voters are left with a credibility gap that matters in a Senate race. Those reports are not trivial anecdotes; they shape how people evaluate a candidate’s character.

He had what she described as a “warrior ethos” and would fantasize about killing people he deemed a threat, she said. She said he told her that rape was about power.

It was something that stuck with her through the years, Ms. Fifield said.

“He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” she recalled, saying that he added that it would not be in “a sexual way, not in a gay way.”

“He was like, I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant,” she said.

Asked about those remarks, a Platner campaign official did not dispute them.

Beyond personal conduct, questions about Platner’s biography keep piling up. Financial disclosures and reporting that he received a $200,000 gift from his father undercut the populist narrative he pitched to voters. Relying heavily on VA disability benefits while presenting himself as a small‑business oyster farmer doesn’t square with the working-class image he cultivated.

Democrats who defend him now are choosing short-term convenience over long-term credibility. That gamble could boomerang if more details emerge, and voters should expect further revelations as reporters and opponents continue to dig. The race is far from settled, and the political fallout is only beginning to unfold.

The campaign released internal polling showing a tightening race, but statistical ties and selective snapshots don’t erase the underlying problems. Internal numbers that turn a close race into a victory lap are fragile when a candidate’s core story is so damaged. Expect both parties to keep testing the limits of how much controversy the electorate will tolerate.

Exit question: I repeat…is this over? I don’t think so. We could have more coming.