Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is under scrutiny for a series of resurfaced social media posts in which he declares himself a “communist” and denigrates cops and white people.

CNN’s KFile uncovered the Reddit posts from Platner, who is facing off against Gov. Janet Mills in the Democratic primary, the winner of which will take on Republican Senator Susan Collins.

“I got older and became a communist,” Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer, wrote on a Reddit forum dubbed “antiwork” in 2021, according to CNN. He also said he was a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking social these days” in a United States Marine Corps subreddit that same year, saying that he “still got the guns though, I don’t trust the facsists [sic] these days,” citing his past military experience in the post.

“Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are,” the Democrat said about white Americans.

“Bastards. Cops are bastards. All of them, in fact,” Platner said in another post.

POLITICO reported that Platner wrote other Reddit posts in 2018 suggesting that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice” and said that a “good semi-automatic rifle” would be expected in order to successfully “fight fascism.”

In addition, the Washington Post reported multiple posts he made to Reddit in 2013 regarding sexual assault, including in the military.

“Rape is a real thing. If you’re so worried about it to buy Kevlar underwear you’d think you might not get blacked out f***ed up around people you aren’t comfortable with,” he wrote.

“In today’s current climate, when every whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a feature length film, anyone who actually thinks the military is purposefully covering up rape to save the career of some god damn [captain], is clearly both an idiot and junior enough in rank or life experience to think it matters,” Platner wrote.

Bangor Daily News on Friday uncovered more of Platner’s Reddit posts, from 2013, in which he calls black people cheap.

“I work as a bartender and it always amazes me how solid this stereotype is,” Platner wrote. “Every now and again a black patron will leave a 15-20% tip, but usually it [is] between 0-5%. There’s got to be a reason behind it, what is it?”

The candidate said that the posts circulating do not reflect who he is today.

“As I told CNN, I was f***ing around on the internet at a time when I felt lost and very disillusioned with our government who sent me overseas to watch my friends die,” Platner told POLITICO. “I made dumb jokes and picked fights. But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired s***poster.”

However, Republicans have raised concerns about the candidate’s past comments.

“Graham Platner is a communist who supports violence against Republicans to promote his radical agenda. These posts are not just him messing around on the internet as he is trying to claim, they paint a very dark picture of a candidate not fit for office,” Samantha Cantrell, NRSC Regional Press Secretary, told The Daily Wire in response to the reports on the Democrat.

The Daily Wire reached out to the Platner campaign for comment.

I didn’t pay much attention to mayoral politics when I lived in New York City. It was the De Blasio years, and as much as I respect Nicole Malliotakis, I don’t think anyone was naive enough to believe she was going to stand between Hizzoner and a second term.

Plus, I lived deep in Crown Heights, so far into Brooklyn that it might as well have been a different city. I lived courtesy of the bodega below my apartment and the 4 train, two things that weren’t likely to change, no matter who was in charge.

To the extent that I cared about the 2017 mayoral race, I cared about the things that affected me. I wanted to hear the candidates talk about how they’d stop gang members from killing each other on my block, or put cops on the subways to stop the all-too-frequent domestic assaults I witnessed while commuting. I certainly didn’t want to hear them hurl insults at each other and sound off on geopolitics.

All of which is to say, had I been a New York City resident last night, I would have put my head through a wall.

The debate — between socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo — was bound to be a spectacle. New York City politics always are, to some degree. This current campaign has made Mamdani a national figure, something Cuomo has already been for quite some time.

Even still — and even for this lapsed New Yorker — last evening’s proceedings had frustratingly little to do with the city.

After a few perfunctory questions (What will the headlines be after your first year in office? What qualifies you to lead the city?), the debate quickly shifted to what really matters for municipal politics: What would the candidates say on their first official phone call with Donald Trump?

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To be fair, this one was a little relevant. At least since Jerry Ford told Abe Beame to drop dead, there’s always been an expectation that the occupants of Gracie Mansion and the White House would deal with each other. And the Queens boy who currently occupies the Oval Office has inserted himself into the mayoral race, threatening to withhold federal funding from the city if it elects Mamdani.

The candidates’ answers were unremarkable. Mamdani said he’d yell about ICE, and Cuomo said he’d yell about COVID. Had the national politics portion of the evening ended there, it would have been fine.

But it didn’t. Instead, the candidates were then asked about the war in Gaza. Cuomo accused Mamdani of refusing to denounce Hamas and employing antisemitic dog whistles like “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada.” Mamdani offered his thoughts on the situation, sounding more like an ambassador than an assemblyman.

“For [the ceasefire] to be just, we also have to ensure that it addresses the conditions that preceded this,” Mamdani said. “Conditions like occupation, like the siege, and apartheid.”

Who is this “we”? What role does the mayor of New York City have in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

At the end of the debate, the candidates were asked about which parades they would attend if elected mayor. Mamdani, wearing the same smug smile he sported all evening, said that he would have more important things to think about than parades. If he thinks he should focus more on Gaza than on New York City parades, he may not be the right man for the job.

A legendary New Yorker had a decidedly different take: “I think a mayor has a responsibility whenever possible to march in parades.”

That New Yorker was Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and the Republican candidate for mayor.

There’s a reason I haven’t mentioned Sliwa until now. Though he was standing smack in the middle of the candidates during the entire debate, he was an afterthought from the very beginning. At one point, the broadcast even cut to a side-by-side of Cuomo and Mamdani, literally eliminating Sliwa from the picture.

Considering all the questions were about everything under the sun except New York City itself, Sliwa seemed a little bit like a lunatic during the debate. While Cuomo and Mamdani attacked each other as a nepo baby and a pervert, respectively, Sliwa hopped in to attack them for weakening the NYPD. While they talked about standing up to Trump, he talked about all the time he’s spent standing up for real New Yorkers on the subway and city buses. While they talked about Gaza, he rattled off the names of outer-borough neighborhoods with the maniacal fervor of a man desperate to remind people that this was supposed to be about New York City, for God’s sake.

Despite how crazy Sliwa may have seemed, he wasn’t crazy at all. It took the moderators 43 minutes to ask about something that actually affects New Yorkers — the NYPD — before they quickly returned to discussing Trump.

When the candidates did talk about city issues, it didn’t matter. Mamdani dodged questions about how he’d pay for free buses and free groceries and all the other free things he’s promised, relying on typical socialist smoke and mirrors to distract from the fact that New York Governor Kathy Hochul has made it clear she won’t raise taxes to pay for his policies.

Cuomo and Mamdani’s failings were on full display, but not in a way that mattered. Sure, Cuomo’s a sexual predator who killed a bunch of grandparents, and Mamdani’s a trust fund jihadist who lacks the experience to govern a condo board. But does any of that have any bearing on how they would run the city? You wouldn’t know from watching the debate.

That’s because the debate wasn’t for New Yorkers. It was for Washington, and for journalists. It was more for me than for whoever now lives in my old apartment in Brooklyn.

It was also for the candidates themselves. For Mamdani, it was an audition for the Democratic powers that be. For Cuomo, it was a chance to remind those same powers that he’s not down for the count just yet.

In other words, what should have been a political contest about local issues became one defined by national, even global ones. Instead of courting their would-be constituents, the candidates stoked their ambitions and inflated their egos. If you drive through Montpelier, you can probably hear James Madison rolling in his grave.

With the exception of those pinning their hope on Mamdani’s socialist revolution, New Yorkers probably aren’t fazed by this. But the rest of us should be. Unless and until they win seats in Congress, Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo should focus on their city and leave the country to those elected to run it. That’s better for New Yorkers and Americans alike. And it may even give them time to fix the subway.