Is he Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump? Protest vote complicates Graham Platner’s victory

Graham Platner addresses a primary election night watch party after his victory on Tuesday in Blue Hill, Maine. Photograph: Robert F Bukaty/AP View image in fullscreen Graham Platner addresses a primary election night watch party after his victory on Tuesday in Blue Hill, Maine. Photograph: Robert F Bukaty/AP Analysis Is he Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump? Protest vote complicates Graham Platner’s victory David Smith in Blue Hill, Maine Democrats have rolled the dice in Maine as they pursue a post-Trump future. Will it work? It was over the moment he received the endorsement of Maine’s most famous resident: Stephen King, the master of horror, who announced on Tuesday that he voted for Graham Platner . More than 100,000 Democrats in Maine agreed, making Platner, a marine veteran and oyster farmer, their nominee for the US Senate against Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November. Graham Platner shrugs off scandals to win Maine Democratic Senate primary Read more But many more did not, with Platner’s rival Janet Mills, who backed out of the race earlier this year after struggling to raise enough funds, seemingly on course to receive nearly one in five votes without even campaigning. That protest vote should set off alarm bells about the damage done to Platner by a steady drip of scandal over several months, including old incendiary Reddit posts, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, sexually explicit messages sent to other women early in his marriage and accusations from a former girlfriend that he was physically intimidating. The controversies have caused an existential crisis for the Democratic party of 2026, raising a series of questions with no easy answers. Shouldn’t the party that condemns white supremacists find a Nazi tattoo instantly disqualifying, especially with some Democrats already fending off charges of antisemitism? Wait, Platner’s defenders say, he says he got the tattoo during a night of drinking while he was a marine, and did not know the image had been associated with Nazis; he has since covered it with a different design. How pure are your purity tests? But shouldn’t the party of #MeToo, so quick to “believe women” and condemn Donald Trump , apply the same standard to Platner? Sure, say Platner’s supporters, but Platner’s main accuser turned out to be a Republican operative, whose most incendiary claims about incidents in their former relationship are disputed by Platner. He has apologised for his past behaviour and said he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression after combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shouldn’t everyone get a second chance? “If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner told supporters in Blue Hill, Maine , on Tuesday. This is nuanced and complex. Despite modern pressures to express opinions with passionate intensity and clanging certainty, is it fine to say you’re not sure? Congresswoman Alex