Maine U.S. Senate Candidate Apologizes for Tattoo With Nazi Links

Politics|Maine U.S. Senate Candidate Apologizes for Tattoo With Nazi Links

Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maine, apologized for having gotten a tattoo years ago that resembles a Nazi symbol and said he would have it removed.

Mr. Platner, who is running for the seat held by Senator Susan Collins since 1997, said in a video podcast interview aired Tuesday that he got the skull and crossbones tattoo, which is widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, while drunk 18 years ago and was unaware of its extremist association.

Mr. Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer, has also come under scrutiny for a series of posts he made years ago on Reddit that played down sexual assault in the military and criticized the police and white Americans living in rural areas.

Mr. Platner acknowledged the tattoo in an episode of the podcast Pod Save America that aired on Tuesday. The podcast played a video clip from a decade ago in which Mr. Platner dances shirtless, with the tattoo visible, at a bar while lip-syncing to a Miley Cyrus song at his brother’s wedding. A host of the podcast, Tommy Vietor, said that some of Mr. Platner’s “political opponents” had been telling reporters that he had a tattoo “with Nazi affiliation.”

Mr. Platner said on the podcast, which is hosted by former Obama aides, that he got the tattoo in 2007 in Split, Croatia, and that he and other Marines had chosen a “terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall” and that “skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing.”

“I am not a secret Nazi,” Mr. Platner said on the podcast, adding that he was a lifelong opponent of antisemitism and Nazism.