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What Graham Platner Said When a Trans Mainer Asked: 'Will You Stand Up for Me?'
“I believe that you are a better person than you once were because I am a better person than I once was," said the potential voter at a campaign stop.
Oct 29, 2025
In an exchange that went viral on social media Tuesday, US Senate candidate Graham Platner offered reassurance to a transgender Mainer who asked whether he would "fight" alongside her and other LGBTQ+ people in the face of attacks from the right.
The woman, identified as Sami, asked Platner at a packed campaign event in Damariscotta, Maine: "If I stand with you, will you fight with me? Will you stand up for me?"
Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer who launched his Democratic primary campaign in August in hopes of ultimately challenging Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) for her seat in 2026, answered that he firmly believes "that every single American has the right to live the life they want to live in their own body as they see fit," and emphasized what he views as his "responsibility" as a straight, white, cisgender male, to defend the rights of LGBTQ+ people.
"I get to put myself out there in ways that other people don’t," said Platner. "I'm doing this because I know that I can say things, I know that I can have conversations, I know that I can knock on doors in places that a lot of other people can't have access to, that a lot of other people won't feel safe in."
"Yes, I will absolutely stand next to you, and if we ever have to go knock doors together, I'm happy to stand by your side," he added.
"If I stand with you, will you fight with me? Will you stand up for me?"
My answer: pic.twitter.com/PAIQOrT9nz
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) October 28, 2025
Sami's question came after Platner's campaign garnered national attention over deleted Reddit posts from his past, in which he used the word "gay" in a derogatory way and made other offensive comments, and a skull tattoo he got while in the Marines that some said resembled a Nazi symbol.
Platner has said he wasn't aware of the resemblance and had the tattoo covered up with another image recently, and has apologized for the Reddit posts, saying at another crowded town hall last week that he "used to hold different opinions."
"I also grew," he said. "I met new people. I learned of other people’s experiences. I realized... that the more open I could be to listen to other people’s stories, the more open I was willing to be—to extend compassion and empathy to others.”
Sami referenced the controversy, telling Platner, "I believe that you are a better man than you once were in the past because I’m a better person than I was in the past."
Alex Seitz-Wald, deputy editor of the Midcoast Villager, said the exchange displayed how Platner is "getting people to forgive him," and spoke to Sami at the campaign event as she was "signing a volunteer form" to help the candidate's campaign.
Platner's response, said Sami, was "what I hoped to get."
"It's very easy for a lot of politicians to sweep us under the rug," she added.
President Donald Trump's attacks on LGBTQ+ rights hit transgender Maine residents earlier this year, with the White House threatening to cut federal funding to the state unless Gov. Janet Mills complied with his executive order using his administration's interpretation of Title IX to block transgender girls and women from competing as female athletes on school sports teams.
Trump agreed to halt the funding freeze after the state sued his administration.
Sami said she had been "really impressed" with Mills' fight against Trump. The governor announced her Senate run earlier this month after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on her to join the primary race.
"I voted for her for governor, but not for this," said Sami. "I don't think she has the ability to make change."
Platner's campaign has garnered attention not just for the recent controversies, but for his outspoken advocacy for working-class families and policy proposals like Medicare for All and a billionaire minimum tax, his conviction that "the oligarchy is the enemy," his statement that he would not support Schumer as the party's leader if he wins the Senate seat, and his unequivocal condemnation of US support for Israel's assault on Gaza.
At the campaign event in Damariscotta, Platner described himself as a "New Deal Democrat" and told the crowd of 700 people that "we cannot be tricked into pointing fingers left and right when the only direction to be pointing fingers is up.”
In recent days, numerous polls have shown Platner leading Mills by a wide margin in the primary race—while one survey found Mills five points ahead of him—and Maine voters have packed gymnasiums and theaters for his campaign events.
Seitz-Wald reported that at the event in Damariscotta on Monday, Platner fielded "eight questions from the audience, one on Reddit posts, none on tattoo."
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'The Establishment Is Spooked': Poll Shows Platner With Big Lead Over Mills in Maine Democratic Primary
"Every second we spend talking about a tattoo I got in the Marine Corps is a second we don't talk about Medicare for All," said Platner ahead of a town hall. "It's a second we don't talk about raising taxes on the wealthy."
Oct 23, 2025
As Politico and other news outlets reported over the past week on old posts written by progressive US Senate candidate Graham Platner and a tattoo he got while in the military, pollsters with the University of New Hampshire were speaking to Mainers about their views on the state's Democratic primary, in which Platner is now facing Gov. Janet Mills along with several other candidates.
Despite the media onslaught, UNH's Pine Tree State Poll revealed on Thursday that voters in Maine heavily favor Platner, who has spent the past two months since his campaign launch speaking to overflow crowds about his platform—one that is focused on making life more affordable for Maine families, shifting the Democratic Party away from corporate interests and toward the needs of working people, and ensuring corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share to provide for the needs of all Mainers.
The poll, taken between October 16-21, found Platner with 58% of the vote. Twenty-four percent of respondents said they support Mills, who announced her campaign on October 14 after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) urged her to run, while other candidates each had less than 2% of the vote.
Politico reported on Platner's old Reddit posts on October 16, generating national attention in the following days, and on Monday the oyster farmer and former Marine spoke on the popular podcast Pod Save America about his tattoo that was visible in a video—one that critics said resembled a Nazi symbol, but which, he noted, didn't prevent from from being approved to reenlist in the US military after he got it. Platner this week covered the tattoo and denounced Nazism.
"In other words, they were in the field as all the [opposition] hit," Democratic consultant Rebecca Katz said in response to the polling. "Mainers have Graham Platner's back because they know he has theirs."
Progressive observers said the polling showed that recent efforts to damage Platner's working class-focused campaign—which, one attendee at the candidate's town hall on Wednesday night noted, coincided with Mills' entrance into the race—have been no match for voters' palpable anger over a political system that has left millions struggling to afford healthcare, groceries, and other essentials while the wealthiest Americans are handed tax breaks.
The survey, said journalist David Sirota, provides "today's evidence that people are really pissed at the status quo, and also despise the national Democratic leadership and the media that so often run interference for them."
Ryan Grim of Drop Site News added that, judging from the temperature-check in Maine, the "Democratic Party leadership could not be more disconnected from the party base if they had lived on the moon the past decade."
Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America said that the poll served as a "good reminder that the DC pundit class has no fucking clue what actual Maine voters think or how they will vote."
The poll results were released the morning after Platner spoke to a crowd of about 600 people at a town hall in Ogunquit, Maine, following a video he posted on Instagram addressing the controversy surrounding his tattoo.
"This has come up because the establishment is trying to throw everything it can at me," said Platner, who also showed a new tattoo he got to cover up the old image. "It is terrified of what we are trying to build here. Every second we spend talking about a tattoo I got in the Marine Corps is a second we don't talk about Medicare for All. It's a second we don't talk about raising taxes on the wealthy. It's a second we’re not talking about the material struggles of Mainers as they try to scrape through a system that at its core is trying to rob them."
"And that's why tonight, I'm just going back right out on the road," he said. "Going around the state of Maine, making myself accessible to Mainers in their communities, so I can listen to them, I can hear about what it is they need to change in our political system, and that is what I'm going to continue dedicating my time to."
At the town hall in Ogunquit, Platner emphasized his political and personal evolution as he turned the attention back to his platform—one focused on passing a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling and ban "billionaires buying elections," rebuilding the US healthcare system by extending Medicare to all, breaking up corporate monopolies and ensuring corporations pay a fair tax rate, and defending the rights of immigrants and other marginalized groups.
"I'm not going to minimize what has come out," he said. "I used to hold different opinions... I also grew. I met new people. I learned of other people's experiences. I realized... that the more open I could be to listen to other people's stories, the more open I was willing to be—to extend compassion and empathy to others."
If they thought that any of this would stop us or deter us: they clearly don't understand our movement, and they don't understand Marines. pic.twitter.com/fXukXG2nVT
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) October 23, 2025
"The establishment is spooked," he reiterated. "And if they thought that this was going to scare me off, if they thought that ripping my life to pieces and trying to destroy it was going to make me think that I shouldn't undertake this project, they clearly have not spent a lot of time around Marines."
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Allies Challenge Corporate Media Onslaught Against Working-Class Champion Graham Platner
"The reason anyone pretends to care about Platner's tattoo and Reddit posts is because they think he's coming after the rich. That's it. That's all it's about."
Oct 22, 2025
US Sen. Bernie Sanders was among the progressives voicing continued support for working-class Senate candidate Graham Platner as he faces a relentless onslaught of negative corporate media attention over his past online posts and a tattoo he says was a drunken mistake that has now been covered with fresh ink.
"He went through a dark period," Sanders (I-Vt.), Platner's most prominent supporter, said Tuesday. "He's not the only one in America who has gone through a dark period. People go through that, he has apologized for the stupid remarks, the hurtful remarks that he made, and I'm confident that he's going to run a great campaign and that he's going to win."
The firestorm began last week, when CNN published a story featuring deleted Reddit posts in which Platner—who is running to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)—called himself a "communist," castigated police, downplayed sexual assault in the military, and asked, "Why don't black people tip?"
Platner, who launched his campaign in August with a fiery anti-oligarchy message, has addressed the resurfaced posts head-on, saying they reflect a period of his life in which he was angry, depressed, less knowledgeable, and disillusioned from eight years of service in the US military. Platner said he has since evolved personally and politically, recognizing today that many of his past comments were abhorrent.
"I don't want people to judge me off the dumbest thing I said on the Internet 12 years ago," the Senate hopeful, now 41, said in a statement regarding the Reddit posts, which he deleted ahead of his campaign launch. "I would like people to engage with who I am today."
Allies of Platner, including US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), came to his defense, accusing the Democratic Party establishment of trying to undermine him for the benefit of its preferred candidate in the race, Maine Gov. Janet Mills—who announced her bid for Collins' Senate seat a day before the CNN story broke.
"I respect Platner's journey and the man he is today. I reject the politics of personal destruction," Khanna wrote on social media. "I stand by my endorsement. I won't cower to the establishment."
pic.twitter.com/fPnFgpD54T
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) October 17, 2025
But with the ink hardly dry on news stories plumbing Platner's social media history, the candidate is now facing fresh uproar over a chest tattoo he got 18 years ago in Croatia while "very inebriated" with fellow Marines.
On Platner's account, the tattoo—which resembles Nazi iconography—was an ignorant mistake, not an expression of affinity for Nazism or antisemitism, of which he said he is a "lifelong opponent." Platner has since had the tattoo covered with "some kind of Celtic knot with a dog on it," he told Vanity Fair on Wednesday.
Platner discussed the tattoo at length in an interview on "Pod Save America," saying he decided to address it publicly after he "got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo."
"We chose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are a standard military thing," he said.
"At no point in this entire experience of my life did anybody ever once say, 'Hey, you're a Nazi,'" Platner added.
In the early stages of his campaign, Platner has spoken out forcefully against what he's called the "right-wing populism" of figures like President Donald Trump, saying it "otherizes people" and wields bigotry as a tool to divide the working class while continuing to redistribute wealth to the oligarchs on top.
"I think we live in a world that is shaped by policy," Platner told MSNBC's Chris Hayes last month. "I don't think it has to be like this. All the outcomes we have are the outcomes of policy decisions that we choose to enforce or not enforce."
"And when you start asking, well, like what other questions you'd have to ask to get the outcomes we have currently, the answer starts to mostly look like we're just figuring out how to steal as much money and time from working people and give it to the ultra-wealthy," he continued. "And that's pretty much where I've landed."
Platner has also been highly critical of the Democratic establishment, condemning the party's support for Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and failure to sufficiently counter the fascistic Trump administration.
"Nothing pisses me off more than getting a fundraising text from Democrats talking about how they're fighting fascism," he wrote on social media in August, shortly after launching his campaign. "It's such bullshit. We're not idiots. Everyone knows most of them aren’t doing jack shit right now to fight back."
"This is a crucial moment for the Democratic Party. If they decide that normal people with some small skeletons in their closet (or inked on their chest) are not welcome, they are finished."
Some argued the fierceness of the backlash against Platner stems from the anti-oligarchy messaging that he's made central to his campaign.
"The reason anyone pretends to care about Platner's tattoo and Reddit posts is because they think he's coming after the rich. That's it. That's all it's about," wrote Matt Stoller, author of the anti-monopoly newsletter, BIG. "They hate populists because we actually believe in equality and that terrifies them."
Others voiced concern about the possible chilling effect that attacks on Platner could have on future progressive political candidates, particularly if he's forced out of the race.
"Censorious, hall monitor liberalism that refuses to accept growth in people—unless you're a corporate centrist and all is forgiven, just ask [Andrew] Cuomo supporters—is far more of a threat to the Democratic Party's chances in the future than anything dug up on Graham Platner," wrote Emma Vigeland, co-host of the progressive political talk show "Majority Report."
Drop Site's Ryan Grim similarly argued that "this is a crucial moment for the Democratic Party."
"If they decide that normal people with some small skeletons in their closet (or inked on their chest) are not welcome, they are finished," Grim wrote. "Because they've tried the other way and it didn't work."
Platner has signaled that he has no intention of exiting the race, telling Semafor that his campaign has $400,000 in recurring monthly donations—a figure that he said did not dip following the resurfacing of his old Reddit posts.
This story has been updated to reflect that Matt Stoller wrote his social media post in his personal capacity.
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