Graham Platner wins Maine Democratic primary despite growing controversy

BLUE HILL, Maine – Graham Platner, a left-leaning progressive, and Donald Trump appear to have won big in Tuesday’s high-profile primaries in Maine and South Carolina.

Platner, an oyster farmer and military veteran who has faced plenty of incoming fire amid mounting controversy, clinched the Democratic nomination Tuesday in left-leaning Maine and now faces longtime centrist Republican Selenda.

Meanwhile, in strongly red South Carolina, Sen. Trump-backed Lindsey Graham won the majority vote in the Senate GOP primary and will avoid running against a right-leaning primary challenger.

And the candidate the president approved in the gubernatorial primary of the state, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, topped a field of contenders and will advance to a runoff in two weeks against South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who finished second.

Here’s what we learned from the key June 9 primaries.

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On the left, storms return

A convincing victory for Platner, who was supported by the defending champions Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Rep. Ro Khanna from California, seems to be another wing of the left in the confrontation between their party and the establishment.

The primary in Maine was held a week after Iowa State Representative John Turek, who was backed by Senate Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, who won the Democratic Senate primary and will face Rep.

Turek, a wheelchair basketball player who won two Paralympic gold medals, defeated a progressive candidate, Sen. Zach Wahls of the district. The main divisive and expensive battle was seen as a proxy battle between the establishment and anti-establishment wings of the party.

Fast forward a week and the ballot box performance of Platner, who promotes a more populist economic agenda as he targets corporate influence and advocates for the working class, is empowering the left.

“The Democratic establishment and powerful interests have spent months trying to stop Graham Platner. Instead, they are showing that voters in Maine and across America want to elect shake-up-the-system outsiders,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee founder Adam Green emphasized.

And Green warned that Platner’s victory “should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Alliance that has spent too long underestimating the appeal of economics and foreign policy.”

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Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner stand together during the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour at the Collins Center for the Arts on the campus of the University of Maine in Orono, Maine, on May 24, 2026. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

What are the conflicts?

Platner in recent weeks has been facing one of the most difficult steps in his run for the US Senate.

The candidate has been playing defense for the past month, in between many conflicts. They include inflammatory online comments made on Reddit, a well-publicized and now covered tattoo on his chest that resembles a Nazi symbol, recent reports that he shared sexually explicit text messages with several women while married, and new allegations last week from ex-girlfriends of a history of rape, heavy drinking and violent episodes. Platner called the latest allegations of violence untrue.

On Monday, the day before the primary election, a former high-ranking staffer in Platner’s campaign he wrote in the Washington Post that Platner “is not a man who would be good for Maine or the country.”

While i growing conflicts prompted some Democrats in the state capital to question whether Platner had damaged goods and needed to be replaced, the candidate this past weekend thanked Maine voters for their continued support.

“When the hurtful things I said on the Internet a decade ago went public as I shared my personal journey through PTSD and the darkness of recovery and accountability and growth. Maine had my back,” Platner said at a Friday meeting not far from his hometown in Down East Maine. “Now, with all the pieces of that past and journey dug up, tried, and armed, you hold me personally. And when I am accused of serious, serious and false accusations against me. Maine, you have my back.”

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Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner and his wife greet supporters after winning his party’s nomination, at his victory celebration in Blue Hill, Maine on June 9, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)

And voters in the Democratic Senate primary in Maine appeared to dismiss the arguments.

“In trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all,” Platner said in his victory speech as he dismissed news reports about his past mistakes as irrelevant to the Senate election.

“This is a movement about us, about so many who work so hard and struggle so much.”

Trump is having a big night

The president was not on the ballot in South Carolina, but he had plenty on the line in the GOP Senate and gubernatorial primaries.

One week after losing Trump’s prize in the high-profile Republican primaries, the president’s biggest push over the GOP was on the line again, this time in South Carolina.

And the president easily passed the test.

The candidate Trump endorsed in the GOP state primary, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, finished first in a crowded field of candidates and won one of the two tickets in the nomination race.

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Evette, who has repeatedly seen Trump’s support, has now advanced to the Republican primary in two weeks against Alan Wilson, who came in second place, in the race to replace Gov. Henry McMaster of the GOP.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette stands on stage during an election night viewing party at the State Fairgrounds in Columbia, SC, on Feb. 24, 2024. Trump defeated Nikki Haley in the South Carolina Republican primary. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

With no candidate leading 50 percent of the primary vote for a majority, Evette and Wilson will battle it out in the June 23 election, and the winner will be considered the clear favorite in the general election in the deep red southeastern state.

Meanwhile, in the South Carolina GOP Senate primary, longtime Trump supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham won the majority of the vote, and will avoid a reelection, the Associated Press reports.

Graham, who was endorsed by Trump, was facing serious challenges from five candidates, including conservative businessman Mark Lynch, who was targeting the congressman over his support for the war on Iran. Lynch was supported by some MAGA leaders who were critical of the president.

Graham’s campaign and affiliated political groups have spent nearly $20 million to drum up support for Trump. And the president joined Graham and Evette in a pre-debut conference call.

The president’s brute force was on display in last month’s GOP primaries, where candidates ousted incumbents in contests in Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky and Texas that captured national attention.

But his 11th-hour endorsement of Iowa Republican Randy Feenstra a week and a half ago — which came the same day he endorsed Evette — in the race to succeed retiring GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds wasn’t enough to propel the three-term congressman to victory.

Feenstra was cut short by Zach Lahn, a businessman, farmer and political strategist who once supported the political wings of MAHA – an acronym for the Make America Healthy Again movement associated with Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – and Turning Point USA, the powerful conservation organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk.

In South Carolina’s GOP primary, major rivals have been touting their support for Trump and his agenda, hoping to win his support.

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Trump, after months of neutrality, endorsed Evette, hailing her as an “America First Patriot” and a “WINNER” in his announcement.

In her first speech of the night, Evette thanked the president and revealed that she is “a businesswoman endorsed by Trump and involved in the fight to take the fight to the left.”