JTA — Graham Platner, the oyster farmer and political neophyte whose past Nazi tattoo and current anti-Israel rhetoric have caused concern among some Jewish groups, has effectively clinched the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Maine after his primary opponent, Janet Mills, suspended her campaign Thursday.

A key Jewish Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said in a statement that he would support Platner’s bid to unseat Republican incumbent Senator Susan Collins. Schumer had initially recruited Mills to run.

“After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,” Schumer said in a joint statement with fellow New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who runs Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

Mills, the state’s current governor, did not endorse or even name Platner in her concession statement. Instead, she cited a lack of campaign funds.

“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” she wrote.

In a statement, Platner said “we are all eternally grateful” to Mills, and that “I look forward to working with her” to defeat Collins. He concluded with a call to arms: “We’re taking back what’s ours.”

Mills was seen as the “establishment” choice for a seat viewed by Democrats as a must-win — one who would come without Platner’s baggage, including on Jewish issues, at a time when the Democratic Party is fending off criticisms of antisemitism slipping in through its left flank.

Though she faced criticism for her age, Mills’ campaign aimed to blunt the insurgent rise of Platner, a military veteran and outspoken........

© The Times of Israel