Maine Voters Deserve to Know Matt Dunlap Still Stands With Graham Platner
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
Matt Dunlap wants credit for finally putting some distance between himself and Graham Platner, and the timing tells you everything. Nobody stumbles into an association with a guy who has a Nazi tattoo, a rap sheet of domestic abuse and rape allegations, and a confessed habit of using porta-potties as his personal comfort zone. You don't discover that in a news alert.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Matt Dunlap, the Maine State Auditor who is running for Congress in the state's 2nd Congressional District, appears to finally be trying to distance himself from disgraced Graham Platner, despite Platner's troubling and well-known history that includes his Nazi tattoo, allegations of domestic abuse and rape, the profile on a social media app known to be used by predators, Platner's confession he pleasures himself in porta-potties, and his views on police and rural voters.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Matt Dunlap wants credit for finally putting some distance between himself and Graham Platner, and the timing tells you everything. Nobody stumbles into an association with a guy who has a Nazi tattoo, a rap sheet of domestic abuse and rape allegations, and a confessed habit of using porta-potties as his personal comfort zone. You don't discover that in a news alert. Dunlap has known who Platner is for a long time, and he stood next to him anyway, because Platner was useful.
That's the part Maine voters need to sit with. This isn't a case of a politician getting blindsided by an ally's bad behavior after the fact. The record on Platner was already out there, ugly and specific, before Dunlap decided he was still comfortable in his orbit. The sudden pivot toward distance only shows up once it became politically inconvenient to be caught standing there.
Voters in the 2nd District deserve better than a candidate who calculates decency on a delay. If Dunlap only found his conscience once the headlines forced it, what does that say about the judgment he'd bring to Congress? People don't get to rewrite their association with someone this disqualifying just because the polling got uncomfortable.
Maine deserves a representative who doesn't need a news cycle to tell him what was obvious from the start.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.