PORTLAND, Maine — A female fan of Senate hopeful Graham Platner downplayed concerns about his old Nazi-linked tattoo at a local rally Sunday — but said if he had ink of an Israeli flag, that would cross a red line for her
The woman had been asked by a New York Sun reporter at the jam-packed event whether an Israeli tattoo on her Democratic candidate — who infamously once sported a tat tied to the Nazi SS — would be a dealbreaker for her as a supporter.
“Yeah, bcause I don’t want genocide,” she said, referring to Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“He doesn’t, either,” she said of Platner. “And [an Israel tattoo] would show that he was being inconsistent, and he’s been very consistent about this straight across the board.”
The woman shrugged off the controversy over the skull and crossbones tattoo Platner previously had on his chest that looked eerily similar to a Totenkopf, or “death’s head” symbol that the Nazi SS used.
Revelations about the tattoo emerged last year, and Platner has since inked over it. The oyster farmer claims he got it while inebriated in Croatia in 2007 and had no idea about its Nazi ties.
Last week, an ex-girlfriend told the New York Times that Platner boasted about having a Nazi tattoo.
But the female Platner supporter at Sunday’s rally dismissed all the hoopla.
“Somebody said that they talked to somebody who had seen one of those or wore one of those, and it was silver, and it didn’t even occur to him that it was the same thing,” she said.
“I think people are making as much of it as they can because they don’t have a lot of substance around anything else, and if they did, we’d hear about it,” the woman said.
“Believe me, they are trolling for dirt.”
Platner has faced a myriad of other controversies as well, including his past treatment of women, alleged extramarital sexting and reputed fantasizing about raping home intruders.
Last week, the New York Times published a bombshell piece detailing some of the unsettling accusations from numerous women who dated him.
One of them, Lyndsey Fifield, a GOP operative, recounted how Platner was rough with her, at one point allegedly pulling her out of a cab by the wrists and at another point twisting her arm behind her back before locking her in a room.
Platner has denied the accusations of being physical.
“I think a lot of the fabricated, but there’s an element of truth in it,” the Platner backer told the New York Sun. “He’s a flawed candidate.”
But “he’s what we want because he’s honest about it.”
“That redemption thing, it’s more valuable to us than a lot of people who say something insincerely, and you know, when you, when you’re around the block for a while, like us, you can kind of sniff out insincerity,” she said.
Despite the scandals, Platner appears poised to win the Democratic nomination to take on incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in the fall.
