Democrats did right by ditching Platner. How will Republicans handle Max Miller?

Opinion>Opinions - Campaign The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Democrats did right by ditching Platner. How will Republicans handle Max Miller? Comments: by Laurie A. Watkins, opinion contributor - 08/04/26 11:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Laurie A. Watkins, opinion contributor - 08/04/26 11:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied

Tom Williams, CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; and Robert F. Bukaty, Associated Press Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), left, and Graham Platner

On June 29, I wrote that I could not stay silent about Graham Platner. I said, as a Democratic strategist, that character mattered more to me than a Senate majority, that a party willing to overlook it was choosing power over principle, and that Maine deserved better than a nominee whose fitness for office was in serious doubt.

A week later, Platner dropped out. Democratic delegates in Maine replaced him on the ballot. The system worked exactly as it was designed to work: an accusation was taken seriously, a party looked hard at itself, and it acted before Election Day made the right decision.

I did not write that piece because it was easy. I wrote it because if character is going to mean anything in our politics, it has to mean something even when the person under scrutiny is on your own side. I still believe that.

Which is why I cannot watch what is happening in Ohio’s 7th District and say nothing.

Rep. Max Miller is running for a third term in a district Donald Trump carried by 11 points in 2024. Six months ago, that seat was not on anyone’s competitive list. It is now, because Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, has alleged in court filings and police reports that Miller assaulted her, threw scalding water on her, and pointed a gun at her, and that their toddler daughter suffered a fractured collarbone and bruising while in his care.

A former girlfriend, Stephanie Grisham, who served as White House press secretary in the first Trump administration, has separately alleged he was physically abusive during their relationship years earlier. A 2021 Politico investigation, based on interviews with dozens of people, reported that Miller pushed a young woman down a flight of stairs in high school after she rebuffed him. Miller denies all of it and says he would be in jail if any of it were true.

What made this impossible to ignore was not just the accusations. It was who finally said out loud that they mattered. Emily Moreno’s father is Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio. On Sunday, after Miller posted a video defending himself, Sen. Moreno said publicly that his former son-in-law should not serve in Congress.

That is not a Democratic strategist’s opinion. That is a sitting Republican United States senator telling voters that a member of his own party, in his own state, is not fit for the office he holds, because of what that man allegedly did to the senator’s own daughter and granddaughter.

I keep thinking about what it means that it took this long for a Republican to say so — especially so close to the deadline to replace Miller on the ballot. These allegations have been public for months. The pattern behind them goes back two decades. And still Miller stayed in the race with the quiet cover of a party that spent the summer telling Democrats exactly how seriously character should be taken.

That same Politico investigation, drawn from interviews with more than 60 people who knew Miller growing up, found something beyond the individual incidents. It found a pattern of nothing sticking. Classmates and teammates from his Ohio high school described a young man who got into trouble and simply never faced consequences for it, who they believed was shielded by his family’s wealth and connections.

That is the deeper story here, and it is not really about one congressman. It is about a party protecting people who are useful to it. Trump endorsed Miller with this history as a matter of public record. The question was never whether anyone would find out. It was whether it would matter if they did.

Wednesday is Ohio’s deadline to trigger a special election that would replace Miller on the ballot. If he withdraws after that, Republicans could still certify a replacement through a party committee, but only by Aug. 10. That is the window Ohio Republicans have left to do what Democrats did in Maine: acknowledge that a candidate has become untenable and give voters someone else to vote for. Maine’s party did it under the exact same kind of pressure — a hard deadline that forced a decision in days, not months. Ohio Republicans have had months, and now they have days.

I know the argument that will come next, because I have already heard versions of it. This is a family matter, some will say. Let the courts sort it out. Do not litigate a custody dispute in the press. I would take that argument more seriously if I had heard anyone make it about Graham Platner. I did not. The same voices now urging patience and due process for Miller were the first to call for Platner’s head, and for the resignation of anyone who had endorsed him, on the strength of an accusation and nothing more.

A member of Congress is not a private citizen going through a divorce. He is a public official who represents hundreds of thousands of constituents in Ohio’s 7th District, who votes on their behalf, and who is now asking those same constituents for another two years in office. Allegations of this nature, made by two women years apart, are not a family matter. They are exactly the kind of public character question voters have every right to weigh before they vote.

I understand why my own side might prefer that I stop typing right now. Miller’s seat, once safe, is now considered competitive. Every week he stays in this race, weakened, is a week that helps Democrats. Silence would serve my party’s interests. I am writing anyway, for the same reason I wrote about Platner: because I don’t think the standard should bend to whoever it is politically convenient to spare, and because this was never about which party benefits. It’s about a man who, if the allegations are true, should not be one signature away from representing anyone.

Here is what I would say directly to the Republican Party. You have spent years telling the country you are the party that protects women and children, the party of family values, the party that will not look away from abuse. I believe many of you mean it. So mean it now, even when it costs you something. A safe seat becoming a contested one is not a reason to go quiet. It is the test. Sen. Moreno passed it. His party, so far, has not.

And here is what I would say to the persuadable voters in Ohio watching this unfold. You do not have to take the Republican Party’s word for what it values. You can watch what it does when one of its own is the problem. That will tell you more than any ad this fall.

Nothing about this is satisfying to write. I would rather be wrong. I would rather these allegations turn out to be untrue, because the alternative is that a small child and her mother have lived through something no family should, and that it altered the course of their lives permanently. But the volume and specificity of what has surfaced, across multiple women and multiple years, does not leave room for looking away.

Maine showed that a party can hold its own accountable without waiting for November to do it for them. The Republican Party leadership in Ohio can still prove it meant what it said about Graham Platner. So far, it has chosen not to.

Laurie A. Watkins is principle at LFW Strategies. A former presidential campaign policy adviser to Barack Obama and former U.S. Army policy official at the Pentagon, she is the author of “The Nerve!” on Substack. 