Maine Democratic Senate Primary Intensifies as Mills Ad Targets Platner Over Comments About Women and Tattoo

Maine Gov. Janet Mills has launched her first negative ad in the Democratic Senate primary, escalating an increasingly bitter contest against progressive challenger Graham Platner in one of the party's top pickup opportunities of the 2026 midterms.

The ad, unveiled Tuesday, centers on comments Platner made on Reddit more than a decade ago about rape and sexual assault. In the spot, several women watch fragments of the posts on a tablet and react on camera. One woman says the comments are "disgusting," while another asks, "we blame the victim?"

The ad closes with footage of a shirtless Platner and a magnifying glass hovering over a tattoo on his chest that once resembled a Nazi symbol, as a narrator says: "The closer you look, the worse it gets."

The six-figure ad buy is running statewide on broadcast, cable and streaming platforms. It marks a sharper phase in a primary that has become a test between the Democratic establishment and an insurgent campaign built around generational change.

The posts referenced in the ad are from 2013, when Platner wrote that people worried about rape should not get so intoxicated that "they wind up having sex with someone they don't mean to," and should "act like an adult." Other unearthed posts showed him dismissing concerns about sexual assault reporting in the military.

Platner told The Washington Post back in October that he was "utterly lost and isolated" at the time, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder after military service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said of the comments: "I can honestly say I did not know what the f--- I was talking about."

The ad also features a scene of a shirtless Platner, with a magnifying glass that briefly hovers over a tattoo on his chest that resembles a Nazi symbol. Platner has apologized for the tattoo in the past, telling Pod Save America in October that he got it while drunk in Croatia in 2007 and later learned closely resembled the Nazi Totenkopf symbol. He said he was "appalled" by the resemblance and has since covered it with a new tattoo.

Platner's campaign called Mills's ad a desperate move by a candidate trailing in recent polls. "Despite what Janet Mills and DC think, Mainers know that Graham should not be defined by the worst thing he said on the internet over a decade ago," said Planter's campaign manager, Ben Chin, as quoted by CBS News.

Mills, 78, has emphasized her statewide record and backing from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, while Platner, 41, has cast himself as a more confrontational outsider. The winner of the June 9 primary will face Republican Sen. Susan Collins, a five-term incumbent viewed as one of the GOP's most vulnerable senators.