Will the controversy surrounding Platner deter primary voters?
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2026
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, senior political correspondent Tamara Keith, and Maine Public state house correspondent Kevin Miller.
This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith, |
| 0:09.2 | senior political correspondent. And Maine Public's Kevin Miller is back with us today. Hi, Kevin. Hi, how are you? |
| 0:15.8 | All right. So today on the show, Maine has a primary tomorrow. Democrats are hoping to flip the Senate seat there in November to unseat longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins. But Kevin, the frontrunner in this race, Graham Platner, has had a rough couple of weeks. Can you give us a quick recap of what's been going on? |
| 0:34.7 | Yeah, so Platner has been sort of, I'd say, shrouded in controversy since last |
| 0:39.3 | fall. I think people may remember the stories about his insensitive comments on Reddit a few years |
| 0:45.0 | ago about women and minorities and rural voters. And then, of course, there's this sculling crossbones |
| 0:51.3 | tattoo on his chest that, it turns out out resembles a Nazi design. But this most |
| 0:57.3 | recent controversy centers on this New York Times story from last week in which several of his |
| 1:02.7 | former romantic partners described kind of really toxic relationships and what some felt as |
| 1:09.8 | intimidating or even threatening behavior from him. |
| 1:13.7 | How has Platterner responded to all this? |
| 1:15.7 | Well, he's acknowledged, as he has kind of throughout this campaign, that he was frequently |
| 1:20.7 | not the best boyfriend in the past because he was in a very dark place, struggling with PTSD |
| 1:26.9 | from his four combat tours, with Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq. |
| 1:31.7 | And he was also self-medicating with alcohol. |
| 1:35.1 | But he's very forcefully denied that he ever behaved aggressively or threateningly towards women, or that he knew about the Nazi ties to this tattoo, which also |
| 1:45.9 | resurfaced in the time story. But Platner is also talking about these stories as showing kind of |
| 1:52.8 | how his very populist anti-establishment campaign is really hitting a nerve with the powers |
| 1:59.3 | of B and D.C. on both sides of the aisle. |
| 2:02.6 | And he says, because if they keep him talking about these dark days from his past |
| 2:07.4 | before he got therapy and before this kind of redemption tour that he's on, |
| 2:12.2 | that keeps him from talking about the really populist messages of his campaign, |
... |
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