<\/p>\n
\n Senate candidate Graham Platner acknowledges the large crowd that attended Platner’s town hall, Sept. 25, 2025, at Bunker Brewing in Portland, Maine. (Daryn Slover\/Portland Press Herald via AP)\n <\/p>\n
Senate candidate Graham Platner acknowledges the large crowd that attended Platner’s town hall, Sept. 25, 2025, at Bunker Brewing in Portland, Maine. (Daryn Slover\/Portland Press Herald via AP)<\/p>\n
Read More<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Democrat Jay Jones participates in the Virginia attorney general debate with Republican incumbent Jason Miyares in Richmond, Va., Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (Mike Kropf\/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP, Pool)\n <\/p>\n
Democrat Jay Jones participates in the Virginia attorney general debate with Republican incumbent Jason Miyares in Richmond, Va., Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. (Mike Kropf\/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP, Pool)<\/p>\n
Read More<\/p>\n
Jones apologized for the comments, which also included the suggestion that his then-Republican opponent\u2019s children face the same fate. Jones has stayed in the race for the Nov. 4 Virginia election, saying it\u2019s up to voters to judge his qualifications for the office. The scandal over them has spilled over into the governor\u2019s race, where Democrat Abigail Spanberger has had to address it repeatedly. <\/p>\n
Platner\u2019s old posts raise new questions<\/p>\n
Platner, a Democrat and oyster farmer, had sparked buzz among progressives in Maine, notably since two-term Gov. Janet Mills last week entered the Democratic race for U.S. Senate<\/a>. The two Democrats are vying for the chance to challenge 30-year incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, greets lawmakers prior to delivering her State of the State address, Jan. 30, 2024, at the State House in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo\/Robert F. Bukaty, FIle)<\/p>\n Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, greets lawmakers prior to delivering her State of the State address, Jan. 30, 2024, at the State House in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo\/Robert F. Bukaty, FIle)<\/p>\n Read More<\/p>\n Platner attempted to explain his past online comments in a video posted to social media last week. In it, he addressed not only his previous comments dismissing military sexual assaults, but also his questioning Black patrons\u2019 gratuity habits and criticizing police officers and rural Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cI see someone I don\u2019t recognize,\u201d he said in the five-minute apology video.<\/p>\n Platner sought to further distance himself from the comments, posted online between 2013 and 2021, during an interview on the Democratic podcast Pod Save America that was posted Tuesday, describing them as the ramblings of a recent military veteran. <\/p>\n \u201cThat was a moment in time when I had not yet been exposed to things, and I had an opinion or I had thoughts that were colored by my experience in the service,\u201d he said during the podcast. <\/p>\n But Platner himself brought up the tattoo, which he says he received in 2007, when he was in his 20s. He said he got it in Kosovo while on leave with the Marines during a night of drinking. A video aired during the podcast shows Platner dancing shirtless with the tattoo visible on his upper chest. <\/p>\n He said he and his fellow Marines chose \u201ca terrifying looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing,\u201d Platner said. <\/p>\n The prominent antisemitism advocacy group, the Anti-Defamation League, reviewed the video and recognized the image in the tattoo as a specific symbol of Hitler\u2019s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II.<\/p>\n \u201cThis appears to be a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo, and if true, it is troubling that a candidate for high office would have one,\u201d Oren Segal, the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence, said in an email response to an Associated Press inquiry. \u201cWe do understand that sometimes people get tattoos without understanding their hateful association. In those cases, the bearer should be asked whether they repudiate its hateful meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n Platner on tattoo meaning: It never came up<\/p>\n In a statement to The Associated Press late Tuesday, Platner said: \u201cIt was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol. I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that \u2013 and to insinuate that I did is disgusting. I am already planning to get this removed.\u201d<\/p>\n Platner added that in the 20 years since he got the tattoo, he enlisted in the Army, \u201cwhich involved a full physical that examines tattoos for hate symbols. I also passed a full background check to receive a security clearance to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan\u2019s security detail.\u201d The notion of his tattoo as a Nazi symbol never came up, he said.<\/p>\n But a former top Platner staffer said he should have known. <\/p>\n \u201cMaybe he didn\u2019t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means,\u201d Platner\u2019s former political director Genevieve L. McDonald, who quit the campaign last week, said in a Facebook post Tuesday. <\/p>\n Platner is running against Mills in next year\u2019s primary. <\/p>\n Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has endorsed Platner, was sticking with the candidate, telling reporters on Tuesday that Platner is \u201can excellent candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to support him,\u201d Sanders added.<\/p>\n Democrats follow in Trump\u2019s campaign footsteps<\/p>\n The episodes, including Jones\u2019 explosive revelations in Virginia, follow a decade of Trump rewriting the standard for what can derail a campaign.<\/p>\n Trump won the 2016 presidential election even after recordings surfaced that had been made 11 years earlier of him speaking to an \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d reporter in which he boasted in lewd terms<\/a> about making sexual advances toward women who were not his wife. Trump also referred to \u201cvery fine people, on both sides\u201d<\/a> of a 2017 episode in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a woman who was protesting against a white nationalist demonstration was run down and killed by a white supremacist in his car. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n