The Platner Problem: Is Political Vetting Broken?

The vetting process for political candidates has been brought into sharp focus after Graham Platner suspended his Senate campaign in Maine following multiple alarming allegations, including an alleged rape. How did the Democratic Party end up running a candidate with so much personal baggage that the campaign was basically doomed from the start?

Vetting Graham Platner

When it comes to vetting political candidates, the process usually takes weeks and costs tens of thousands of dollars – but with Mr. Platner, it appears the vetting focused more on ideological alignment and less on assessing the content of his character.

Sources familiar with the situation reportedly told The Wall Street Journal that Platner’s background check cost just $6,250 and was completed in only three days, thanks largely to Democratic strategist Dan Moraff. The background check missed Platner’s Nazi tattoo and his disturbing sexual behavior, both of which surfaced during his campaign, but it did flag troubling online activity.

In a Reddit post, the former Maine Senate candidate disparaged military personnel, including a specific member of the US armed forces who, according to Platner, deserved to die. His comments indicated support for political violence and socialism, while also pointing to past experiences involving prostitution and drugs.

Platner, a veteran, blamed his controversial rhetoric on trauma that he endured while serving. When the posts first surfaced, Moraff told Platner that "none of this will or should stop you from becoming a US senator."

"If what the voters wanted were people who were grown in vats and had never done or said anything that they might regret their entire lives, we’d have a very different country," Moraff insisted. "Part of our thesis here is that people do not want their candidates grown in vats. They want people who are real human beings and they want people who do not look and sound like the lab grown people who’ve been leading this country off a cliff."

Moraff may be right to an extent, but do voters really have to choose between vat people or socialist sympathizers with Nazi tattoos? If this is the vetting standard for political candidates, what does that say about the state of our politics? More importantly, what does it say about how the political class views the American electorate?

A Bipartisan Issue

The purpose of vetting political candidates is to determine whether their personal lives align with the values of the party they hope to represent. Ostensibly, the goal is to find a candidate who can authentically speak for the people they aim to serve.

Did the Democratic strategists behind Platner’s campaign truly believe he was the right man to represent Maine? If so, that raises serious questions about their judgment. If not, it raises an even bigger question: Did they care at all? Platner’s candidacy demonstrates a troubling disregard for the voters expected to support him.

The vetting problem isn’t unique to the Democratic Party, although Republicans have worked to improve how they vet candidates since the process was rushed in selecting late Sen. John McCain’s running mate, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“One of the mistakes we made in the [Sarah] Palin process was one of assumptions,” said former McCain aide Steve Schmidt after the McCain-Palin loss to Barack Obama. “We immediately made the assumption that anyone with ‘Governor’ next to her name has a base level of knowledge of history and policy that in a post-Palin world it isn’t necessarily safe to assume.”

Both parties have known for years that neglecting the vetting process is a fool’s errand, so why do they still do it? Cutting corners is an insult to the voter, and if they want Americans to trust their judgment, they might consider showing democracy a little more respect.