Too Bad to Check: Maine Dems’ Featured Labor Day Speaker Will Be … Der Oysterführer?

The first question that comes to mind here is this: Are you freaking kidding me? Who in their right mind thought that having an alleged date-rapist and Nazi-tat aficionado as the featured speaker at their rally would reflect well on their organization? 

Apparently, there are very few Democrats in Maine. There is Graham Platner, Troy Jackson, his cousin, and their kids. The Hancock County Democrats must not have been able to get Jackson to speak, and so …

Graham Platner, the former Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine who dropped out of the race amid a series of scandals, will headline a Labor Day rally in Ellsworth, Maine.

The rally, which is publicly listed on the Hancock County Democrats website and was first reported by the Bangor Daily News, will mark Platner’s first public appearance since leaving the Senate race in early July. He will speak about the history of unions and role of organized labor, according to the website.

Platner left the race following an accusation of sexual assault by a woman he previously dated, though he strongly denied the allegation. His campaign was marred by other scandals even before the allegation, including old social media posts dismissive of sexual assault, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol that he later covered up, sexually explicit messages that he sent to other women while married, and allegations of physical intimidation by former partners. He denied the accusations of physical intimidation and said others were the result of PTSD from his time in the military.

Platner isn’t just showing up to hang out. Hancock County Democrats chose Herr Totenkopf to “headline” the event. These Democrats went out of their way to make Platner their main attraction just weeks after their state party pushed him to withdraw and then spent weeks and beaucoup bucks to hand-select his replacement on the ballot. Democrats inside and especially outside of Maine wanted to memory-hole Platner so that Susan Collins and the NRSC couldn’t use him as a poster boy for Democrats in the midterm cycle.

And now, Hancock Democrats just made him their poster boy anyway. Looks like Der Oysterführer’s back on the menu, boys!

The Labor Day setting amplifies the irony here. Nothing says “labor” like a guy who hasn’t held a full-time job for years and has spent much of his adulthood sponging off his parents. Morris Katz and Daniel Moraff cast Platner in a role as a working-class stiff and built that false narrative around the middle-aged privileged shirker, betting that the media would never bother to verify the claims. At least Axios had the decency to belatedly admit that Katz and Moraff turned out to be correct about that.

That’s better than David Hogg, who wants Platner to go away mainly to distance the Left from the stench it created. He told a CNN panel that the only public appearance Platner should make is an abject apology to all his victims, including all of the voters he disappointed:

David Hogg says Platner shouldn’t be speaking at an upcoming labor event in Maine.

They went all in to make this guy a model for the new type of candidate they want to run, and are now upset that he doesn’t want to go away and be quiet. pic.twitter.com/3weT58IpwV

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 13, 2026

HOGG: No, it doesn’t. And Graham should not be going on any form of comeback tour if that’s what he’s trying to make, because he needs to go on an apology tour, if anything. He needs to apologize to the victims of his behavior, and he needs to apologize to those people that he’s clearly lied to.

And it’s really unfortunate because there are a lot of people that clearly believed in the campaign and have been massively, you know, let down, obviously, by his behavior. And I’m glad that he dropped out, obviously. But this is not what he should be doing.

I don’t disagree, but Platner’s not the only person who owes apologies. So do the Democrats who kept their endorsements in place after the Totenkopf tattoo came to light, who pushed Platner as a working-class hero even while his real backstory came to light, and the Democrats who kept defending Platner after Lyndsey Fifield came forward along with two other women to reveal Platner’s record of domestic violence. Not a single Democrat dropped their support over that; Ro Khanna instead demanded that Maine voters demonstrate “grace and redemption” by electing Platner to the US Senate. The rats only jumped ship when Jenny Racicot went public with the sexual assault allegation, and then likely only because Racicot is a Democrat whose reputation they could not besmirch to cover for Der Oysterführer as they did with Lyndsey.

Maybe the Hancock County Democrats have it right. The party bought Platner, and now they should have to own him. 

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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