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Last year, at one of Graham Platner’s early rallies as a candidate for U.S. Senate, the gruff oysterman opened with a joke. “Until recently,” he told the crowd, “I thought that harbormaster of Sullivan, Maine, was going to be the extent of my political career.”

It turns out he may have been right. After weathering a welter of scandals to win the Democratic nomination, Platner is now facing widespread calls to drop out after an ex-girlfriend accused him of sexual assault. Today we’ll explain the fallout—and what it means for a race that could decide Senate control.

Rewind. Who’s this guy, again?Platner is an oyster farmer, Marine Corps veteran, and first-time candidate. A bearded, tattooed, flannel-wearing political newcomer with a gravelly voice and workingman’s affect, he seemed poised to finally realize Democrats’ dream of unseating Susan Collins, Maine’s invincible-seeming Republican senator. Platner, who campaigned alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders and supports Medicare for All, also seemed to embody the theory that unabashed economic progressivism could win back disaffected voters who have abandoned Democrats.

I seem to recall some ugly headlines about him before now …Good memory. The left-wing operatives who recruited Platner did little to vet their candidate, who turns out to have a long history of troubling behavior. As a Marine, Platner drunkenly got a tattoo that resembles a Nazi symbol. In Reddit posts, he downplayed sexual assault, used........

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