As more and more revelations come to the fore about Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who just won the Democrat primary this week, many Democrats seem to have adopted a simple mantra regarding his campaign: Vote for the Nazi: It’s important.
The saying echoes a slogan from campaigns past — one that supporters of Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Platner’s opponent in the general election, would do well to employ against Platner. The slogan demonstrates how Democrats will embrace a candidate — any candidate — so long as that person opposes President Trump.
(In-)Famous Bumper Sticker
Nearly two score years ago, a peculiar campaign in that most peculiar of political states, Louisiana, produced a slogan for the ages. In 1991, incumbent Gov. Buddy Roemer ran for reelection, months after switching his party registration from Democrat to Republican. The party switch, coupled with actions Roemer took in office, angered constituents so much that he finished third in the state’s all-party primary. Instead, the top two vote-getters in the primary advanced to the general election runoff: former Democrat Gov. Edwin Edwards, who was widely viewed as corrupt, and David Duke, the founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who ran as a Republican.
Faced with a choice between a corrupt politician (one who eventually was convicted on corruption charges in 2000) and a Klansman associated with neo-Nazis, Roemer supporter Kirby Newburger came up with a catchy bumper sticker that signified Edwards as the proverbial lesser of two evils: “VOTE FOR THE CROOK: IT’S IMPORTANT.”
The bumper sticker, coupled with general disgust at the thought of Louisiana electing an avowed Klansman as governor, meant Edwards ran away with the runoff, winning over 61 percent of the vote to Duke’s 39 percent.
Roles Reversed
Three and a half decades later, and now Democrats are the ones with the statewide candidate with ties to white supremacist beliefs. Platner had a Nazi tattoo on his chest for years; while he claims he did not know the symbol’s origins, people who knew him before his political career have contradicted this assertion, saying Platner “would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo.”
Yet consider just some of the recent quotes by Democrats and their allies attempting to rationalize their continued support for a candidate with Nazi ink and a documented history of abusive behavior toward women:
- “Several donors I know are still all-in for Platner because he’s not Susan Collins and he’s a Democrat.”
- “We don’t care. I think that’s the case for many donors. Anybody who beats Susan Collins will do.”
- “He was a mean boyfriend when he got out of the military and was drinking. Susan Collins was the defining vote for the Big Beautiful Bill. … They just want to defeat him. They just want to make sure that the status quo remains in place. … I think the fight’s worth having.”
- And then there’s Sen. Bernie Sanders: “We cannot continue to allow the Republican Party to control the Senate and push forward Trump’s oligarchic and authoritarian agenda. And there is only one candidate who will do something about it. That candidate is Graham Platner.”
These activists will support someone — anyone — who will help them defeat Collins in the Senate campaign and, by extension, Donald Trump. In their rush to stand up to President Trump’s alleged fascist tendencies, they are willing to support … an actual fascist, or at least someone with a fascist tattoo on his chest.
Or, to put their position more simply: Vote for the Nazi: It’s important.
‘Lesser of Two Evils‘
I have never understood the concept of casting a vote solely to oppose someone, rather than voting only for such candidate(s) I can affirmatively support. Of course, as a registered Republican living in the District of Columbia, my vote won’t come close to deciding any election while I live in Washington, giving me a luxury of conscience that people elsewhere don’t have.
That said, Collins, or a group allied with her, could do worse than to reprise and adapt the slogan from the 1991 Louisiana runoff to use against Platner. Perhaps this admitted act of trolling would remind Democrats, and all of us, that we should expect a modicum of decency from candidates who seek to represent us in public office.
