Graham Platner’s once-powerful campaign against Senator Susan Collins is currently imploding. On Monday, Politico published a credible accusation of sexual assault against Platner, the latest of a long string of concerning allegations about his background and character. Democrats in Maine and elsewhere are not giving Platner much time to consider his next move, as he will be locked in as the party’s nominee in November if he doesn’t withdraw in the next six days.

To put it mildly, this is not supposed to happen in high-profile, high-stakes contests for the U.S. Senate. Candidates are usually vetted for problems in their background before they secure endorsements, raise serious money, and hire staff. Clearly that process has failed. And this isn’t a case where a candidate with a seemingly unimpeachable background is revealed to be an impostor who fooled the whole world. No, Platner was first hit with troubling allegations all the way back in October 2025, when Reddit posts accused him of behaving like a garrulous jerk in his D.C. bartending days. And by his own account, he had suffered from combat-related PTSD and alcohol abuse in the not-so-distant past.

Did Platner’s earliest backers know about his problems and decide they could be swept aside in a sort of war-veteran version of “youthful indiscretions”? Did they think they showed the candidate was a regular guy with regular shortcomings? That’s unclear. But as Platner’s candidacy progressed, the warning signs became more troubling and less consignable to the distant past. Hot on the heels of the Reddit posts was the Nazi-tattoo saga, which........

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