Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has had a remarkably rocky campaign with as many bad national headlines as perhaps any recent congressional candidate, yet he remains the presumptive party nominee in Tuesday's primary and is expected to win the nomination.

He essentially closed out the race in April when Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign as donors stopped supporting it.

Mills remains on the ballot and is still eligible to receive votes, but polling now centers on whether Platner can unseat GOP incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, with the RealClearpolitics average showing him leading by 7.4 points.

John Miles Coleman, associate editor of the University of Virginia's Sabato's Crystal Ball, told Just the News on Monday that the odds of Platner losing Tuesday's primary seem negligible to him. 

Assuming Platner gets the Democratic nomination, Coleman said, the ball would be in his court when it comes to the question of Platner either dropping out or being replaced on the general election ballot – amid recent reports of Platner’s “toxic behavior” in relationships with several ex-girlfriends and recently unearthed, sexually explicit social media posts.  

Coleman points out that Mills still has the option to file as a write-in candidate, which has an August deadline, but that the "prodding that was needed to get her to run in the first place," makes a write-in campaign unlikely. 

Coleman also said that since Maine has rank-choice voting, any "spoiler" candidates – non-winning contenders whose ballot presence impacts which candidate wins – would not have much of an impact.

Platner continues his campaign amid recent allegations that he texted sexually explicit messages with numerous women during his marriage, and three ex-girlfriends calling him anti-women and describing his behavior as “unsettling.”

One ex-girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, claimed in a New York Times’ report that Platner knew one of his tattoos looked like a Nazi symbol. Fifield said the tattoo is a “Totenkopf, which refers to a skull-and-crossbones image that Nazi Schutzstaffel units used as a symbol during World War II. 

Fifield also told The Times that Platner would regularly grab her by the shoulders – sometimes leaving marks – and during an argument he twisted her arm behind her back and trapped her in a bedroom. 

Platner said in response that those allegations were untrue. The Marine veteran has also said he was unaware that a skull-and-crossbones chest tattoo he got in 2007 resembled Nazi imagery and that he covered it up in 2025 after facing public scrutiny.

Platner also took responsibility for his actions in a recent CNN interview, saying that he was dealing with “a very dark period of [his] life,” specifically due to undiagnosed PTSD, during the romantic relationships. He said he often self-medicated with alcohol and was a “far from perfect boyfriend.”

“I’m not proud of who I was then, but I am proud of the work I’ve done since, and the movement we are building in Maine,” he also said.

Washington Democrats still appear to support his campaign but have sought his assurance about no more damaging revelations. 

Pollster and political strategist Doug Schoen thinks Platner is a “simply unacceptable” candidate due to his far-left and extremist political stance, the tattoo, “his apparent lack of candor about the tattoo,” his personal life and more.

Schoen, a former Clinton adviser, told Just the News that some of the polls he’s seen show Platner sinking in Maine and that he believes the Democrats should encourage him to withdraw and have Mills run in his place. However, he doesn’t think Platner will drop out of the race.

Beyond the national political punditry, Maine voters still seemed to support the 41-year-old oyster farmer.

“He’s just Maine. He sounds like Maine,” Keith Tharp, a photographer from the town of Mount Desert, recently told The Nation. “When he’s talking, he comes across as a Mainer. So, we want to hear what he has to say.” 

Erin Oberson, a co-president of the Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses United, which has endorsed Platner, told the Nation that Platner is “a candidate who will represent the working class” who also is an advocate for Medicare for All, saving rural hospitals, strong unions, pay equity, taxing the rich and standing up to oligarchy.

Mills has not officially endorsed Platner but suggested before suspending her campaign that she would back the eventual Democrat candidate.

Maine Democrat Adam Cote, who hasn’t endorsed anyone in the Senate race but faced off against Mills in the 2018 gubernatorial primary, said that if Tuesday’s results show Mills garnering more votes than people would expect of someone who suspended their campaign, it’s “a sign that there’s a lot of protest and angst within the primary voters.”