Ro Khanna supports Graham Platner’s bid for Senate despite ‘shameful’ actions

Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, speaks during a ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ campaign rally in Portland, Maine, on 25 May 2026. Photograph: Amanda Sabga/Reuters View image in fullscreen Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, speaks during a ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ campaign rally in Portland, Maine, on 25 May 2026. Photograph: Amanda Sabga/Reuters Ro Khanna says he supports Graham Platner’s bid for Senate despite ‘shameful’ actions Democratic congressman issues qualified defense of Maine candidate in his bid to unseat Republican Susan Collins Progressive Democratic congressman Ro Khanna issued a qualified defense of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner on Sunday, saying “his actions were misogynistic, they were shameful, they were wrong, but they didn’t come as a surprise to a lot of the folks in Maine.” The former Marine-turned-oyster farmer, who is campaigning to unseat the state’s Republican senator Susan Collins in November, has been hit with successive waves of accusation about his past actions, including sending sexually explicit messages he sent to women while married and being stenciled with a Nazi-themed tattoo. Despite new allegations, Maine’s Platner predicts voters will send him to Senate Read more Progressive and independent Democrats have largely supported Platner in his bid to unseat the moderate Republican incumbent, but with two days to go before primary voting, the contest has turned into a referendum on Platner, not Collins, and of Democratic party vetting weeks after former congressman Eric Swalwell dropped a bid to become California governor after sexual abuse allegations against him surfaced. Khanna told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday he was still supporting the party’s candidate because “he took accountability” and is running on a platform of national health insurance, taxing billionaires and opposing the war in Iran. “People in Maine knew that he had had two tours of duty in Iraq. He came back broken in a dark place,” Khanna reasoned. “That doesn’t excuse his behavior, but they knew this. He was in Washington, and then he went back to Maine, and he started an oyster farm. He took accountability. He himself has said it was shameful, and he had redemption.” Khanna said he believed the account of Platner’s former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, who told the New York Times that Platner was prone to misogyny and “regularly grabbed her by the shoulders – sometimes hard enough to leave marks – and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.” In another incident, Fifield said, Platner “twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was ‘calm.’” Fifield subsequently slammed the outlet, claiming on X that its reporters had “methodically delayed and twisted” her account into “a gift to the Platner campaign” and cla