Two Maine police groups condemned Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner for old Reddit posts that were unearthed last week to kick off a backlash to his buzzy campaign.
The Maine Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police and the Maine State Troopers Association became the first in-state groups to condemn Platner’s posts, saying they have “no place in Maine politics.” The posts included the progressive candidate’s coarse criticism of local police dating back to the “Black Lives Matter” protest movement in 2020.
Platner’s posts came to light after Gov. Janet Mills joined the primary for the right to take on U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in 2026. The controversy bled into this week when the Army and Marine veteran publicly aired a decade-old video of him shirtless at his brother’s wedding with a tattoo of a skull-and-crossbones design linked to Nazis. He covered the tattoo by Wednesday.
His Reddit history came to light last week after reporting by CNN, Politico and the Bangor Daily News. They dated back to 2013 and included posts in which he wondered why Black people “don’t tip,” suggested violence is necessary for social change and called police “bastards.”
“We work in all rural and urban areas of the state and value all of our citizens,” Michael Edes, the Maine FOP executive director said in a statement also representing the troopers association. “Graham Platner‘s time has come and gone long before it even started.”
Platner got more specific in posts from five years ago. In response to a Reddit thread discussing the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office requesting to purchase riot gear, the Sullivan oyster farmer criticized his local department by saying it is “so full of overweight pansies that they now need taxpayer dollars to protect themselves” from students and “aging hippies.”
“Cops are opportunistic cowards,” he wrote.
Around the same time, he also criticized the Ellsworth police chief for not kneeling at a protest of police killings of Black men across the country. He noted the chief’s good reputation but criticized him for not showing a gesture of goodwill to the crowd, calling his attitude an example of “thin blue line trash.”
Platner’s campaign did not comment on the police groups’ criticism, referring a reporter to a video in which he apologized for his past words. He had a massive lead on Mills in a poll released Thursday by the University of New Hampshire that was taken while the candidate was weathering controversy. The newcomer has drawn massive attention and the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, since joining the race in August.
The Maine Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police is a Republican-leaning group that endorsed Collins in 2020 and backed former Gov. Paul LePage two years later in his losing campaign against Mills, a former attorney general and prosecutor well-known to the law enforcement community.
In 2022, the police group also backed U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District, after he opposed his party’s signature policing overhaul the previous year. LePage is running against Golden in 2026, and the four-term incumbent faces a primary challenge from State Auditor Matt Dunlap.
