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At a Portland town hall days before his primary win, Graham Platner went out of his way to distinguish himself from a member of the Senate Democratic caucus he wants to join.

“I don’t want to go down there and simply be not functional,” Platner said. “You can’t just go down there and be John Fetterman and just, and just kind of sort of be an asshole.”

He stopped himself briefly to add: “He said mean things about me. I’m allowed to say that.”

Fetterman, who flipped his Pennsylvania seat blue in 2022, has indeed taken aim at Platner following a burst of unfavorable revelations about the Maine candidate’s past, calling him a “creep” and a “dirtbag” and repeatedly referring to Platner as “P-Hustle,” a version of his digital moniker.

Their crude feud stands out as the sharpest fracture between an elected Democrat and the scandal-plagued political novice on whom the party has pinned its hopes to unseat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and retake the Senate.

The two tattooed, brash-talking men have drawn comparisons since Platner rose to prominence, putting him at pains to separate himself from a senator who became a frequent Democratic defector and a cautionary tale for the left.

Platner entered his competitive Senate race with some of Fetterman’s former political strategists and a similar workingman brand. And their unvarnished public postures include distinct mental health struggles.

In an April interview, asked by the commentator Mehdi Hasan about worries that he would “turn into John Fetterman once he’s elected,” Platner called Fetterman “the bane of my existence” because of how frequently he had faced questions about their apparent commonalities.

He immediately promised not to emulate Fetterman’s trademark casual attire, a hoodie and shorts, on the Senate floor. (Platner recently swapped his own day-to-day, blue-collar wardrobe for a button-down shirt for his primary victory speech.)

Once a progressive favorite, Fetterman has broken with Democrats on a range of policy issues, including President Donald Trump’s war in Iran.

In Platner’s case, some see risks associated with his checkered personal history — the very history that Fetterman has excoriated in a blitz of interviews in the past week. One Portland resident wrote in a March letter to the Press Herald, also citing the provocative former Gov. Paul LePage, “do we want six years of explaining our own Fetterman-LePage to the nation?”

A Platner campaign spokesperson, who declined to be named, pointed to his previous remarks about his differences with Fetterman and said Platner was focused on Mainers.

FOUR YEARS LATER

Dan Shea, a professor of government at Colby College, said Platner is attempting to follow in Fetterman’s success as an unconventional Senate hopeful, while claiming a deeper belief in his progressive positions.

“He’s saying, in essence, it seems to me: ‘Look, you might take a gamble with me on electing, from Maine, a loud, hard-driving populist. We don’t usually do that in Maine. That might be a gamble for you, but if I win, this is what you’re gonna get,’” Shea said.

In their respective Senate campaigns, four years apart, each man has presented himself as an ordinary person and promised to regain support among working-class voters who had soured on the Democratic Party in favor of Trump.

A group of progressive campaign staffers who worked for Fetterman in 2022 now support Platner’s campaign. Rebecca Katz, a top strategist for the Pennsylvanian campaign, was among the founders of the Fight Agency consulting group now working for Platner.

Fetterman has not been a client of Fight Agency since it started last year, according to a firm spokesperson. Joe Calvello, a former communications director for Fetterman’s Senate office, helped recruit Platner to run for Senate in Maine and worked on his campaign launch last year before decamping to New York City Hall as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s press secretary.

“Much of the story around John Fetterman was a bit of a story. You know, he had been trying to get into politics for quite some time,” Platner said in the April interview with Hasan. “There are elements of me that I think are much more legitimate when it comes to someone from the normal world.”

During his 2022 campaign, Fetterman was serving as Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor after spending more than a dozen years as a small-town mayor. Platner, a Marine veteran and oysterman, has never held elected office.

In a statement provided by a spokesperson, Fetterman did not respond to the claim that Platner more authentically represented the working class. He instead listed a series of inflammatory remarks and episodes from Platner’s history, including his now-covered tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol and a deleted Reddit comment calling the U.S. Army “absolute trash.”

Platner insists he did not know about the Nazi associations with the skull-and-crossbones on his chest, although a former girlfriend and a former campaign aide have said he did. He has disavowed his trail of incendiary online comments, which he said he made while experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both men have been open about their mental health challenges. Fetterman suffered a stroke before his 2022 Senate primary, leading to auditory difficulties, and the month after he took office, he went to a hospital to be treated for depression.

“Mental health disclosures of politicians is a relatively new thing,” Pacifico Gonzaga, a psychologist with Psychology Specialists of Maine, said in a phone interview. Comparing the two men, Gonzaga said, “Fetterman also has, to my knowledge, not really used his diagnoses to kind of deflect or defend himself from any criticism.”

WAR OF WORDS

When Platner visited Capitol Hill last week, Senate Democratic leaders like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stood by Platner, as they have since Gov. Janet Mills, whom Schumer had initially backed, suspended her Senate campaign.

Fetterman, who often stands apart from his party in style and substance, lambasted and taunted Platner, pouncing on the recent reports that Platner sent sexual messages to up to six women since marrying his wife in 2023.

“Oh, P-Hustle? P-Hustle? Yeah, he’s around. Apparently we didn’t match up on Kik,” Fetterman told a CNN reporter when asked about Platner, referring to the anonymous messaging app where Platner created an account in 2016.

“What kind of a creep, what kind of a creeper, has been on, (for) a decade, on a platform like Kik and send a dozen explicit kinds of messages and who knows what else?” Fetterman added. “Who wants to defend those things? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t.”

Fetterman has continued his broadsides in a series of TV interviews, as recently as Wednesday night. He has taken umbrage with Platner’s criticism — “this is a guy that had a problem with me, how I dress,” Fetterman said on Fox News last week — called for Platner to release copies of the sexual messages he sent to women outside his marriage and suggested that, on Kik, Platner could not verify the ages of interlocutors. (Platner said in an MS NOW interview that he had confirmed the ages of women with whom he was in contact.)

Shea, the government professor, said Fetterman’s approach seemed “over the top” for a sitting senator. “He may not like the guy. He may have problems with Graham Platner’s character. But why keep it going?” Shea asked.

“The Democratic Party, we all want to talk about flipping seats, flipping seats. Well, I’ve done that,” Fetterman told Fox host Sean Hannity. “I have flipped a seat, you know, and I think I just try to be reasonable and I try to call balls and strikes.”

His attacks on Platner may not have any impact on Maine voters. Platner received over 70% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary election.

Platner — who on Saturday called Fetterman “a stooge for AIPAC and the Republican party” in a social media post, referring to the pro-Israel lobbying group — may have more to gain.

“If it’s truly a rational move, my best guess is it’s an effort to distract from other scandals,” Shea said, referring to the drumbeat of unflattering headlines about Platner’s past. “And it is a way to buttress your progressive credentials.”

It could also reassure any voters for whom Fetterman stands as an example of dashed hopes for a nontraditional Senate candidate.