Also liable for this disaster are the progressive operatives who recruited Platner and were so infatuated with his identity — a gruff, handsome oysterman with social democratic politics — that they failed to do their due diligence. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Platner’s top strategist, Dan Moraff, didn’t want to spring for a thorough background check, which can take weeks and cost around $20,000. “Moraff asked for an expedited, cheaper review to be done within days,” The Journal said.
Moraff, who travels the country trying to recruit left-wing, working-class candidates, reportedly learned about some of Platner’s troubling Reddit posts but decided to charge forward anyway. “Part of our thesis here is that people do not want their candidates grown in vats,” he told The Journal.
He’s correct about the appetite for unconventional candidates, but that is no excuse for such willful sloppiness. Before blithely assuming that voters would forgive a candidate’s flaws, he had a responsibility to try to find out what those flaws were.
This fiasco might seem to vindicate the establishment that Platner railed against, but Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, who wanted to stop Platner, is also partly culpable here. Schumer badly misread the Democratic electorate and tried to clear the field for his preferred candidate, Maine’s 78-year-old governor, Janet Mills, leaving a vacuum that Platner filled.
As NOTUS reported last week, Dan Kleban, a co-founder of Maine Beer Company, had been preparing to launch a populist, anti-Wall Street Senate bid last summer, but the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee tried to dissuade him. “He and his campaign were left with the impression that if he ran, Democrats in Washington would make it difficult because they were holding their support for Maine Gov. Janet Mills,” NOTUS wrote. Kleban ended up delaying the start of his campaign, not getting in until Platner had already caught fire.
