Allegedly abusive lefty Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner wasn’t simply tough on his ex-girlfriends and sexting behind his spouse’s again — he was additionally an “a-hole extraordinaire” as a bartender.
Platner, who confronted a firestorm this week as he tries to unseat longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins and assist the Democrats win the Senate majority, was a deeply disagreeable barkeep at Washington DC’s Tune Inn, one common claimed.
“Platner was simply type of darkish, you’d attempt to flip up somewhat dialog, and he wouldn’t give something again, no smile, no acknowledgement. Simply nothing coming again that was pleasant and heat,” stated Wayne Laugesen, an unbiased journalist and strategic communications and coverage advisor.
“He simply appeared like a troubled, darkish, unfriendly, sad individual.”
Platner, 41, who additionally been accused of mendacity about his Nazi tattoo, labored at The Tune Inn for not less than 5 years when he lived in Washington between 2011 and 2016.
He bartended on the in style Pennsylvania Avenue dive when he returned from a tour in Afghanistan as a Marine in 2011, whereas he was in his late twenties to early thirties.
It was in these years that Platner’s heavy ingesting led to a DUI arrest and 2011 conviction that noticed his driving license suspended for a yr.
“He simply form of resented being there,” stated Laugesen, a former editorial web page editor for the Denver Gazette and Colorado Springs Gazette. “In the event you requested him for a beer or a cheeseburger, it was a hassle to him. He simply form of rubbed me the mistaken means.”
Laugesen, who on the time lived three blocks from the Tune Inn, stated Platner was so unpleasant that he and his spouse finally took their enterprise to the Hawk N Dove subsequent door every time they noticed Platner behind the bar.
Platner, who would dangle on the Tune Inn when he wasn’t on shift, usually took his shirt off whereas ingesting late at evening, based on public accounts.
In 2012, he even bragged in regards to the cranium and crossbones tattoo on his chest — well known because the “dying’s head” image for the notorious Nazi SS dying squads.
“He stated, ‘Oh, that is my Totenkopf,’” a former acquaintance informed Jewish Insider in October, talking on situation of anonymity. “He stated it in a cutesy little means.”
Platner denied allegations this week that he’d been bodily with an ex-girlfriend and as soon as locked her in a bed room.
The embattled Platner, who’s made a slew of racist feedback in since-deleted on-line posts, additionally as soon as trashed black individuals for not tipping.
Responding to a 2013 Reddit put up titled “What’s one query you might have all the time needed to ask somebody of one other race,” he requested, “Why don’t black individuals tip?”
“I work as a bartender and it all the time amazes me how strong this stereotype is,” he wrote. “Each from time to time a black patron will go away a 15-20% tip, however often it’s between 0-5%. There’s acquired to be a cause behind it, what’s it?” he wrote, based on the Bangor Every day Information.
However the Tune Inn may need additionally been what arrange Platner for his US Senate run.
The ingesting gap was particularly in style with Capitol Hill staffers and political journalists. It was there Platner turned pals with Ryan Grim, the previous HuffPost DC bureau chief.
Grim, who based Drop Web site Information in 2024, was certainly one of Platner’s early nationwide interviews final yr, serving to to amplify his working-class narrative regardless of Platner’s rich upbringing, as he recounted how the oyster farmer was his bartender nearly each Sunday on the Tune Inn.
It was in his bartending years that Platner, a military veteran, started combating PTSD, based on his marketing campaign. He was taking lessons at George Washington College, however hasn’t publicly disclosed his main, and dropped out in 2016 to maneuver again to Maine.
His marketing campaign didn’t return The Publish’s request for remark.
