Exclusive | Graham Platner was an a-hole extraordinaire as DC bartender: troubled, dark

Allegedly abusive lefty Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner wasn’t just rough on his ex-girlfriends and sexting behind his wife’s back — he was also an “a-hole extraordinaire” as a bartender.Platner, who faced a firestorm this week as he tries to unseat longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins and help the Democrats win the Senate majority, was a deeply unpleasant barkeep at Washington DC’s Tune Inn, one regular claimed.“Platner was just kind of dark, you’d try to turn up a little conversation, and he wouldn’t give anything back, no smile, no acknowledgement.Just nothing coming back that was friendly and warm,” said Wayne Laugesen, an independent journalist and strategic communications and policy consultant.“He just seemed like a troubled, dark, unfriendly, unhappy person.”Platner, 41, who also been accused of lying about his Nazi tattoo, worked at The Tune Inn for at least five years when he lived in Washington between 2011 and 2016.He bartended at the popular Pennsylvania Avenue dive when he returned from a tour in Afghanistan as a Marine in 2011, while he was in his late twenties to early thirties.It was in those years that Platner’s heavy drinking led to a DUI arrest and 2011 conviction that saw his driving license suspended for a year.“He just sort of resented being there,” said Laugesen, a former editorial page editor for the Denver Gazette and Colorado Springs Gazette.

“If you asked him for a beer or a cheeseburger, it was a bother to him.He just sort of rubbed me the wrong way.”Laugesen, who at the time lived three blocks from the Tune Inn, said Platner was so disagreeable that he and his wife eventually took their business to the Hawk N Dove next door whenever they saw Platner behind the bar.Platner, who would hang at the Tune Inn when he wasn’t on shift, often took his shirt off while drinking late at night, according to public accounts.In 2012, he even bragged about the skull and crossbones tattoo on his ches...