You mean Screen Actors’ Guild President Reagan? Heading a major labor union is close enough to elected office for me.
After Platner drops out, I sure hope the Democratic Party doesn’t take the message of “We need to get rid of mavericks and outsiders and just go back to nominating party insiders like same old.” The thing bad about Platner was his scandals, not his platform, views or origin.
Nominate lots of dirt-free “Platners.”
Adding to that pile.
He has exactly the same reason to lie as Platner does. He has the same Nazi tattoo; of course he’s going to say that he didn’t know what it was.
But it hardly even matters. Whether he knew or not at the time he got it, he surely found out sometime afterwards, and still didn’t get rid of it. That says that, at the very least, he’s willing to tolerate Naziism.
Sure, the lumberjack guy that people are talking about as a possible replacement should check off a lot of the same boxes that Platner did, in voters’ minds. And he has also already served as a state legislator, which is a perfectly reasonable qualification for a new Senator. And I don’t know details about him, but if he got elected to the legislature, he has to have already faced some level of vetting and oppo research, which apparently hasn’t turned up any major scandals. In an ideal world, we’d have a few months to vet him more thoroughly before a contested primary, but in the world we actually live in, he looks to be a pretty good choice.
I’ll put this in the main US Senate races thread as well: For those wanting to get a feel for Troy Jackson, NPR’s A Martinez interviewed Jackson this morning on Morning Edition. The audio, as of this writing, is not yet uploaded but it shouldn’t be too much longer now that the page is built.
EDIT: My impressions are that Jackson is not an Obama-style shot of political lightning or anything … but he comes across as an earnest servant of the people. for what that’s worth. Interesting to me is that the big thing that’s going to distinguish Jackson from the “Establishment Democrat” (to whom that matters) is his accent – Jackson more or less sounds like a rural Canadian. Basically the Maine version of Adam Sandler’s Cajun Man. Jackson is in no way slick or polished compared to, say, a Gavin Newsom. That’s not to say Jackson came off as slow-witted or in-over-his-head–just that he’s a different flavor of politician than is usually seen on the national stage (US Senator John Kennedy [R-LA] is superficially similar, but is putting on an aw-shucks act).
Reading up further on him, it looks like he first rose to prominence as a labor leader, organizing a large and economically-disruptive protest against the logging industry importing Canadian workers. I’m sure a lot of folks consider that a “scandal”, but there are probably also a lot of folks for whom that’s the reason they voted for him.
Platner and his campaign are navigating an exit:
Graham Platner and a small team of strategists behind his candidacy are trying to navigate an exit from the consequential Senate race in Maine without entirely squandering the movement he built, people familiar with the matter said, rather than digging in or trying to find a path forward for his candidacy.
He is expected to announce his decision through a recorded video, which could come later today. As of this morning, the message had not been taped, the people familiar said.
If this is accurate, he’s definitely dropping out, and trying to get the best deal he can on the way out - unclear if that’s about the ‘movement’ and policies, influencing the replacement candidate process or pick, or something more personally beneficial to him.
Just quit dude. There’s nothing to navigate.
eta: directed at Platner not you.
Yes, obviously. He’s revealing himself to be even more of a shithead. But it could be worse - he could be staying in and trying to take down any chance of a Democratic win just out of spite (or delusion or stubbornness).
Let’s go Troy Jackson!
Interesting that the guy at the center of “you have to vote for the nazi fraudster alcoholic scumbag or else Susan Collins might win” is now holding the Senate hostage and threatening to remain in the race, essentially guaranteeing a Collins victory and Republican control of the Senate, if he doesn’t get what he wants (which is some combination of a personal payout and a guarantee that the replacement candidate will keep caterwauling about “The Zionists”). It’s almost as if this guy is a bad person whose politics are very stupid. If only someone had noticed this before.
I would say the Maine Democratic Party should just tell him if he doesn’t get out now unconditionally, there will be consequences including prosecution of the rape. Then again, we all know by this point how useful it is to tell Graham Platner “no.”
There needs to be prosecution of the rape regardless of whether he stays in or quits. Just like there should be prosecution of all rapes.
Audio just got uploaded.
Exactly how does the Maine Democratic Party make good on that threat?
Obviously politicize the state prosecutor’s office over a heinous crime that is notorious for being difficult to get convictions for cases that happened years ago and retraumatizing victims in the process.
I’m pretty sure the part is still able to force him off the ballot they’re just trying to give him the chamce to avoid making this uglier.
It’s within Maine’s statute of limitations, but no physical evidence was collected. Platner being found not guilty – if a grand jury would even indict – would be a virtually certainty. By facing charges Platner could pay for his crime with further personal embarrassment, perhaps, but the legal system doesn’t have a remedy here.
Yes, how long we will never know. Pretty clear not when he first got it, but after that- who knows?
The Democratic Party does nothing of the sort. The DNC wouldnt have picked Platner. The VOTERS pick the nominee, not the party- with a few small exceptions.
Not a nazi, not a “fraudster” We have even proven that last by cites.
The Maine Democratic Party has absolutly no power to prosecute him for tape.
Well, you never know how a jury will react, but even a grand Jury indictment is unlikely.
There are reasons many rapes aren’t prosecuted, and several of them apply here.
I’m okay if he just leaves the political world.
As a reminder, what happened is that I showed you that even your own links support the notion that individuals receiving TDIU benefits are barred from working and that 100% disability ratings are subject to review for fraud. We also went over Platner’s structuring of his income to put everything related to the fake oyster business in his wife’s name while claiming at campaign events to work the boat himself, the fact that he has received multiple cash gifts and interest-free loans from his parents (who are in fact very rich and often funnel money to him despite your strange assertion that being divorced somehow is the opposite of this), and the general issue of Platner the campaign character written by Morris Katz having little correspondence to Platner the real person.
You simply ignored everything in the citation and the discussion and kept repeating that the notion of Platner engaging in the kind of VA disability fraud that is rampant and common among veterans, and very obvious in his case, was “debunked.”
I would add to the above that we now know about another relevant thing that a person who is truly “totally disabled” should not be able to do: Break into a house, hold a woman down, and rape her.
It is mystifying why anyone is still defending any of this, especially when so much of it comes down to asserting that Graham Platner - the rapist - is a credible source about the life and decisions of Graham Platner.
Agreed.
I want to be careful here and not jump on people who want him prosecuted — that reaction comes from a very human place. Wanting accountability when something awful comes to light is normal. But at the end of the day, it really does have to be the victim’s choice whether anything moves forward legally. Her trauma, her timeline, and her sense of safety matter more than anyone’s political feelings about the situation. When something this serious is still fresh, it’s easy for people to focus on the broader implications, but the person at the center of it deserves to set the pace.
It’s a very good thing that that’s not the way the justice system works. But you’re right that it’s much more difficult to prosecute if the victim doesn’t want to cooperate with the prosecution.