Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner of Maine fantasized about committing violence and raping anyone who violated his space, a former girlfriend said.
In a report from The New York Times, Lyndsey Fifield, 40, who dated Platner from 2013 to 2015, said his love of violence bubbled just below the surface,
The Times report said, “Platner’s displays of weaponry and discussions of violence sometimes left her uneasy.”
There was the AR-15 he kept in his Capitol Hill apartment, she said.
His actions with an ax also left her concerned. That ax was in remembrance of work he had done on the Appalachian Trail.
It wasn’t its presence that bothered her; it was watching him sharpen it as he watched TV.
She said he had fantasies of killing potential threats.
“He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” she said.
He told her it was not “a sexual way, not in a gay way.”
“He was like, I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant,” she said.
“Asked about those remarks, a Platner campaign official did not dispute them,” the Times reported.
Fifield is a conservative from Virginia who has supported conservative and Republican causes. The Times said that she knew at the time she dated Platner that he “was struggling with the aftermath of his military service.”
She also noted in a 2016 diary entry that Platner was “the most toxic literally abusive man on earth who destroyed my life.”
The Platner campaign used her politics to seek to discredit her comments.
“Let’s be very clear: This is a lifelong G.O.P. operative who’s dedicated her career to electing Republicans,” the campaign said in a statement.
Fifield said she worked for the failed 2024 campaign of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, which she said was her last job in politics. The Times said it sought for and did not find any connection between Fifield and the campaign of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Platner’s November opponent.
The Times said Platner gave a statement saying he “too often self medicated with alcohol, and was a far from perfect boyfriend” during a “very dark period of my life.”
“I take responsibility for all of that, and wish I had been better,” he said. “Any characterization beyond that is false, and I believe, politically motivated. 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.”
The Times report indicated that more than two dozen people had been interviewed for the story, including two other former girlfriends who identified themselves as Democrats, who also shared unflattering and unpleasant recollections about Platner.
“The three described him in similar terms,” the Times reported. “Spending time with him could be exhilarating, they said. But they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing.”
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