A political strategist working on behalf of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner tried to recruit Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy into a populist crusade against private equity in baseball. It did not go well.
Portnoy, who is Jewish, responded to the outreach by pointing to what he described as Platner's Nazi-linked tattoo, a Totenkopf symbol connected to the German Nazi Schutzstaffel paramilitary group, and publicly posted the email chain on X, wondering aloud why Platner's campaign would think he'd "want to play footsy with a Nazi."
The exchange, reported by Fox News Digital, captures a political operation so poorly conceived it raises basic questions about who is advising Platner, and whether anyone on his team bothered to think through the optics of asking a Jewish media figure to boost a candidate dogged by associations with Nazi imagery.
Jeff Coote, a political strategist with Slingshot Strategies, emailed Portnoy on Thursday with a casual opener: "Hey Dave, something different for you." Coote flagged a Platner campaign ad targeting private equity's role in managing the Boston Red Sox and described it as an example of Platner's "populist streak." He tried to bond over shared frustrations about "s*** people are p***ed off about like the Sox" and Red Sox principal owner John Henry II.
When Portnoy didn't respond, Coote nudged his inbox again on Friday.
Portnoy finally replied, but not the way Coote had hoped:
"Hey Jeff. Now this is the Nazi guy right? Yeah I'd be happy to talk to him about that tattoo and him being a Nazi. I'm not as interested in his baseball takes. Let me know when we can set up some time. Dave."
Coote responded with "nice one" and then asked, "is that a no?" He offered to set up a "productive conversation" between Portnoy and Platner.
Portnoy was not interested in a productive conversation. He fired back with a message that left no room for misunderstanding:
"What's that mean? You reached out to a Jew to poo poo a Nazi. I'm not Bernie Sanders. If your boy isn't a Nazi and can handle me 1 on 1 in a convo set it up. If he can't you should fire yourself for thinking I'd want to glamorize this clown."
The reference to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is also Jewish, pointed to the fact that Sanders has endorsed and rallied with Platner despite the tattoo controversy. Portnoy made clear he was not willing to follow that example.
The political ad at the center of Coote's pitch ran on NESN, the New England SportsNet broadcast network, during a Friday Red Sox game against the Minnesota Twins. In it, Platner declared that "private equity is destroying our favorite baseball team, stripping them for parts," and took aim at the broader reach of private equity firms into housing, sports, and everyday life.
Platner's ad closed with a line designed to tug at New England heartstrings: "I will reverse the private equity curse. I'm Graham Platner and I approve this message because I miss Mookie Betts." Betts, the popular Red Sox right fielder, was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020, a move many Boston fans still resent.
The ad used red font that NESN said was "synonymous with the baseball team." Halfway through Friday's game, the network pulled it. By Saturday, NESN issued a statement saying it regularly removes ads with "credible concerns" about intellectual property use, though the network did not elaborate on which specific intellectual property was at issue.
NESN is owned by Fenway Sports Group, the same entity Platner's ad was attacking. That ownership connection raises its own questions about the ad's removal, though NESN framed the decision strictly around IP concerns.
Platner, for his part, took the removal in stride. He posted on X that after the ad was pulled, the Red Sox "blew a 4-0 lead", as if the private equity curse he'd warned about had already kicked in.
The Portnoy debacle is hardly the first time Platner's campaign has generated attention for the wrong reasons. The Maine Democrat has faced sustained scrutiny over crude, deleted Reddit posts that surfaced earlier in his campaign, exposing a pattern of online behavior that clashes sharply with the image of a serious Senate contender.
Among the most damaging revelations: Platner mocked a Purple Heart soldier in one of those deleted posts. When confronted, he refused to apologize.
That refusal drew fierce backlash from the military community. Veterans publicly condemned Platner for disparaging remarks about the Army and wounded service members, adding a constituency that wants nothing to do with his campaign to a growing list.
The fallout has put Platner's high-profile endorsements in an awkward position. Senator Elizabeth Warren's praise for the candidate collided directly with the resurfaced posts about the wounded veteran, creating exactly the kind of contrast campaigns dread.
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders have largely ducked questions about the controversy. When pressed on Platner's vulgar Reddit history, party officials went silent, a response that speaks volumes about how little appetite there is to defend the candidate's record on the merits.
The underlying issue Platner's ad raised, private equity's growing footprint in professional sports, is a real one. RedBird Partners bought an 11% stake in Fenway Sports Group in 2021. Fenway's portfolio extends beyond the Red Sox to include a stake in RFK Racing, the NASCAR team. Fans across the country have legitimate gripes about how financial engineering has reshaped team management, ticket prices, and roster decisions.
But a legitimate issue needs a credible messenger. Platner is not that messenger. A candidate who carries a tattoo linked to a Nazi paramilitary organization, who mocked a wounded veteran online, and whose own party leaders won't defend his record is not well positioned to lead a populist movement on anything.
The decision to pitch Portnoy, a Jewish media personality with a massive audience and zero patience for political games, only compounded the problem. Coote's emails read like a strategist who did no research on the person he was contacting. Portnoy has never been shy about his views, and the idea that he would lend his platform to a candidate with Platner's baggage reflects a fundamental misread of both the man and the moment.
Portnoy's invocation of Bernie Sanders was pointed. Sanders, despite being Jewish, endorsed Platner and appeared with him, a decision that has drawn its own criticism. Portnoy made clear he would not follow that path, drawing a bright line between populist economic frustration and willingness to overlook what he sees as Nazi associations.
That distinction matters. The progressive left has long argued that economic populism can paper over other concerns. Portnoy's blunt refusal suggests there are limits, and that not every Jewish public figure is willing to set aside questions about a candidate's past in exchange for shared frustration about billionaire team owners.
The most telling detail in the entire episode may be Coote's reaction to Portnoy's initial response. When Portnoy asked if Platner was "the Nazi guy," Coote replied "nice one", treating it as a joke rather than a serious concern. Only after Portnoy made clear he was not joking did Coote shift to offering a "productive conversation."
That response suggests the Platner operation has grown accustomed to brushing off the tattoo controversy as a punchline rather than addressing it head-on. It is one thing for a candidate to acknowledge a past mistake and explain it. It is another to have your strategist laugh off a direct question about Nazi imagery from a Jewish interlocutor and then ask if he still wants to collaborate.
Portnoy's advice to Coote was characteristically direct: "you should fire yourself for thinking I'd want to glamorize this clown." Harsh, but not unreasonable. A strategist's job is to protect the candidate from exactly this kind of public embarrassment. Coote delivered the opposite.
Maine's Senate race may not command national attention the way contests in swing states do. But the Platner campaign has become a case study in what happens when a party backs a candidate whose personal history keeps detonating in public.
The Reddit posts. The veteran mockery. The Nazi-linked tattoo. The party silence. And now, an email pitch so poorly conceived that it handed one of the internet's most influential personalities a layup to humiliate the campaign on a national stage.
At some point, the question shifts from whether Platner can win to why anyone with political judgment would continue associating with a campaign that generates this kind of coverage. Sanders endorsed him. Warren praised him. And when the predictable blowback arrived, Democratic leaders said nothing.
Portnoy, at least, said something. And what he said was what any reasonable person reviewing the facts would think: this pitch should never have been made, and the person who made it should be looking for new work.
When your own outreach strategy hands the opposition a highlight reel, the problem isn't the person who said no, it's the campaign that thought asking was a good idea.
