On Tuesday night, after a whirlwind day in Washington, Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, rushed house.
Rumors had been spreading from Portland to the Potomac about Mr. Platner’s messy private life, after news reports that he had despatched sexual messages to girls whereas married. Democratic senators had been urgent him about whether or not extra damaging revelations had been coming. Journalists had been swarming, staking out his hometown.
Amid the turmoil, Mr. Platner labored the telephones, rolling via calls to ex-girlfriends who would possibly publicly acknowledge that whereas he might have been a foul boyfriend, he was, the truth is, an honest man.
In interviews with The New York Instances on Wednesday, a number of girls did simply that, describing Mr. Platner as a enjoyable and caring companion, and saying they felt protected with him. Some stay associates with him to at the present time, years after their relationships ended.
However in intensive conversations over the previous two months, three different girls who had been romantically concerned with Mr. Platner supplied a much more sophisticated evaluation, describing unstable and “poisonous” relationships that had been unsettling and at instances emotionally wrenching.
Mr. Platner could possibly be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but additionally demeaning to girls and, in not less than one case, even bodily threatening. He drank closely and was commonly untrue.
Mr. Platner, 41, a fight veteran, has spoken overtly about grappling with post-traumatic stress dysfunction, depression and drinking that he mentioned resulted from his time within the army. As revelations about him have surfaced — together with his dismissive remarks online about rape and derogatory feedback about girls, in addition to a tattoo he had that’s well known as a Nazi image — he has mentioned his previous conduct doesn’t replicate who he’s at this time. Mainers, he has urged, shouldn’t judge him for “the worst factor I mentioned on the web on my worst day 14 years in the past.”
The important accounts supplied by three of the ladies interviewed by The Instances, who had been every in romantic relationships with him for years, give a fuller image of Mr. Platner’s life. They make clear an earlier period, when he has acknowledged intense struggles, but additionally elevate questions on his newer years in Maine, which his marketing campaign has offered as a interval of therapeutic and private redemption.
The disclosures final week that Mr. Platner, now married, was exchanging sexual messages with girls as not too long ago as final 12 months have sophisticated that narrative and unnerved Democrats, who see the Maine seat as key to their efforts to regain management of the Senate.
Lyndsey Fifield, 40, a Virginia conservative who has labored for right-leaning teams and Republican campaigns, recalled him as “cavalierly contemptuous of ladies’s feelings, of our ‘weak spot.’” Ms. Fifield, who dated Mr. Platner from roughly 2013 to 2015, mentioned that his offensive on-line posts “jogged my memory of simply how a lot he hated girls.”
Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, who mentioned she dated him casually on and off between 2019 and 2021, mentioned the posts deepened her perception that he didn’t respect girls. “Once I noticed the previous feedback that he made on-line,” she mentioned, “I acknowledged a model of him that I had experiences with.”
A number of the girls additionally raised questions on his trustworthiness. Mr. Platner’s insistence that he did not know that his tattoo was a Nazi image till it grew to become a marketing campaign problem final fall was merely not true, Ms. Fifield mentioned. In spite of everything, she mentioned, he had taught her the phrase for it years earlier, referring to it as “my Totenkopf.”
His marketing campaign strongly denied that he knew what the tattoo stood for. And in an announcement to The Instances, Mr. Platner mentioned he had “too usually self medicated with alcohol, and was a removed from good boyfriend” throughout what he described as a “very darkish interval of my life.”
“I take accountability for all of that, and need I had been higher,” he mentioned. “Any characterization past that’s false, and I consider, politically motivated. I’m not pleased with who I used to be then, however I’m pleased with the work I’ve carried out since, and the motion we’re constructing in Maine.”
‘Do Not Name Graham’
This text relies on interviews with greater than two dozen folks, together with six girls who had been romantically concerned with Mr. Platner. The Instances spoke with associates or acquaintances of a number of of the ladies, reviewed contemporaneous textual content and social media messages and noticed a few of Ms. Fifield’s diary entries. Mr. Platner declined to be interviewed for this text.
The ladies who described tough relationships with Mr. Platner knew him at totally different factors of his life. Ms. Fifield mentioned she dated him beginning once they had been each of their late 20s in Washington, throughout a time Mr. Platner has described as difficult. Ms. Racicot knew him in Maine once they had been of their mid-30s and he was dwelling in Sullivan, Maine, and dealing on his oyster farm.
The third girl, a Democrat from Maine who spoke on the situation of anonymity, had a long-distance relationship with Mr. Platner on and off for years, as not too long ago as 2016.
The three described him in comparable phrases. Spending time with him could possibly be exhilarating, they mentioned. However in addition they recounted patterns of heavy consuming and womanizing. Requested to sum up how he handled her, the third girl mentioned she felt like “collateral injury to the world that’s his.”
When Ms. Fifield first met Mr. Platner in 2013, he was a scholar at George Washington College, and he or she was engaged on veterans’ points on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and starting to make a reputation for herself as a conservative activist on-line. Their roughly two-year, on-again, off-again relationship, as Ms. Fifield described it, was heady and passionate.
“Lyndsey, I like you in a means I can’t even describe,” he texted her in 2016, in line with a message reviewed by The Instances. “You might be actually all the things to me.”
She mentioned she acknowledged that Mr. Platner was scuffling with the aftermath of his army service and thought she might assist him. Ms. Fifield, who was navigating household challenges on the time, recollects that interval as emotionally rocky for her, too.
Mr. Platner could possibly be tough together with her, Ms. Fifield mentioned, notably once they had been consuming, leaving her shaken and generally afraid. Within the interviews, Ms. Fifield grappled with the way to course of her experiences. She was fast to notice that he “by no means hit me, he by no means punched me.”
However she mentioned he commonly grabbed her by the shoulders — generally arduous sufficient to depart marks — and, on one event, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she needed to remain within the automotive.
Throughout one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her again, shoved her right into a bed room and held the door closed from the opposite facet so she couldn’t get out, telling her to stay there till she was “calm.” Finally, Ms. Fifield mentioned, she fell asleep and left the subsequent morning.
“It harm,” she mentioned. However she added: “It didn’t trigger an damage, it didn’t break my arm.”
Mr. Platner “strongly disputes” any claims of bodily intimidation or altercations, his marketing campaign mentioned. The Instances couldn’t independently corroborate Ms. Fifield’s account of the altercations.
Ms. Fifield additionally recalled that Mr. Platner’s shows of weaponry and discussions of violence generally left her uneasy.
She mentioned he saved an AR-15 mendacity round his condo on Capitol Hill, and would sharpen an ax — a relic from his time engaged on the Appalachian Path earlier than he enlisted within the Marines — whereas watching tv.
He had what she described as a “warrior ethos” and would fantasize about killing folks he deemed a risk, she mentioned. She mentioned he instructed her that rape was about energy.
It was one thing that caught together with her via the years, Ms. Fifield mentioned.
“He mentioned this quite a bit: If anyone ever broke in right here, I’d rape them,” she recalled, saying that he added that it will not be in “a sexual means, not in a homosexual means.”
“He was like, I’d rape them to indicate them that I’m dominant,” she mentioned.
Requested about these remarks, a Platner marketing campaign official didn’t dispute them. A buddy who knew Mr. Platner and Ms. Fifield throughout that interval mentioned the feedback sounded out of character.
Mr. Platner, who had overlapping relationships with different girls whereas he and Ms. Fifield dated, additionally referred to girls as “hatchet wounds,” Ms. Fifield mentioned, a crude time period for feminine anatomy.
The Instances reviewed texts between Ms. Fifield and Mr. Platner, together with Google Chat exchanges, texts and Fb messages between Ms. Fifield and her associates throughout and after the connection. The Instances additionally reviewed a few of Ms. Fifield’s diary entries from after the connection had ended, and spoke with two of her associates who confirmed that the pair had an emotionally unstable relationship however couldn’t corroborate the bodily altercations or essentially the most controversial feedback she described.
Ms. Fifield mentioned she didn’t anticipate her associates to supply that corroboration as a result of she didn’t inform anybody on the time, saying she had been embarrassed.
The impression of the connection on Ms. Fifield’s life lingered for years, she mentioned. She referred to him in a diary entry in June 2016 as “essentially the most poisonous actually abusive man on earth who destroyed my life.” These near her inspired her to maneuver on: “DO NOT CALL GRAHAM,” a buddy messaged her that 12 months.
Ms. Fifield, who’s affiliated with Independent Women, a conservative group, insisted that her political opinions had nothing to do together with her selection to come back ahead. She labored briefly on Nikki Haley’s 2024 presidential marketing campaign and earlier than that for the Heritage Basis, a conservative suppose tank. Ms. Fifield mentioned she had not been paid by any marketing campaign or political entity since Ms. Haley’s marketing campaign.
Mr. Platner’s marketing campaign mentioned in an announcement, “Let’s be very clear: It is a lifelong G.O.P. operative who’s devoted her profession to electing Republicans.”
Ms. Fifield mentioned she had no connection to the marketing campaign of Senator Susan Collins, Mr. Platner’s doubtless Republican opponent. She acknowledged that Impartial Girls had been supportive of Ms. Collins however mentioned she had not been energetic with the group not too long ago.
“I do know it appears to be like like a bitter ex-girlfriend Republican attempting to take down a Democrat — it has nothing to do with that,” Ms. Fifield mentioned. “If he was operating as a Republican, I’d be doing this very same factor.”
Carrie Lukas, the president of Impartial Girls, mentioned Ms. Fifield had by no means been an worker and was final paid by the group in 2022. The full quantity she was paid, Ms. Lukas mentioned, was roughly $15,000 over 2021 and 2022.
Mr. Platner’s marketing campaign organized interviews for The Instances with three different girls who dated him over a interval of seven years and all assist his candidacy. They described a really totally different form of relationship.
Caroline Lemp, who dated Mr. Platner for a number of months in 2013, described him as a “mild big.” She mentioned he by no means made her really feel unsafe or confirmed any indicators that he was scuffling with the bodily or psychological results of his army service.
“He was an ideal boyfriend,” mentioned Ms. Lemp, 36, who now lives in St. Louis. “He was tremendous variety, very good, enjoyable.”
The others, who spoke on the situation of anonymity, mentioned Mr. Platner was by no means bodily threatening. One, a nurse from Belfast, Maine, who dated him for a pair months after he returned house to Maine, described him as accountable, clever and supportive. One other, who dated him in Washington between roughly 2011 and 2013, mentioned she witnessed some “probably problematic conduct,” referring to his heavy consuming. However she “felt actually protected with him,” she mentioned.
‘My Totenkopf’
Final fall, just a few months after saying his marketing campaign for Senate, Mr. Platner mentioned that he had discovered from information media inquiries that the tattoo on his chest was well known as a Nazi image, and he moved to cowl it.
Mr. Platner mentioned that he hadn’t recognized what the picture was, aside from “a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones” on the wall of a tattoo parlor in Cut up, Croatia, the place he and different Marines in his unit had it carried out in 2007.
“It was not till I began listening to from reporters and D.C. insiders that I spotted this tattoo resembled a Nazi image,” Mr. Platner instructed Politico in an announcement in October. “I completely wouldn’t have gone via life having this on my chest if I knew that — and to insinuate that I did is disgusting.”
Ms. Fifield referred to as {that a} lie.
Mr. Platner, she mentioned, knew once they had been relationship years in the past that the tattoo was a Nazi image, and that he referred to as it “my Totenkopf.”
“I’d by no means have recognized what that was,” she mentioned. “He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo.”
Ms. Fifield mentioned he instructed her that he and different members of his unit chosen the tattoo as a result of “they had been like a loss of life unit, they had been killers,” and noticed a parallel between their unit and the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or S.S., unit, that used the skull-and-crossbones picture.
“They actually, intentionally, chosen it as a result of it was related to their army unit,” she mentioned.
Mr. Platner “strongly disputes” Ms. Fifield’s account of what he knew in regards to the tattoo and what he instructed her, his marketing campaign mentioned.
His marketing campaign famous that he had not hidden his tattoo since receiving it, taking off his shirt in images, on the seashore and on the fitness center.
“I’ve lived my whole life like an everyday individual with a cranium and crossbones on their chest,” he said on a liberal podcast in October, after exhibiting video of him dancing shirtless at his brother’s marriage ceremony. “At no level on this whole expertise of my life did anyone ever as soon as say, ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’”
In a non-public chat group final summer time, months earlier than Mr. Platner acknowledged the tattoo himself, Ms. Fifield instructed associates that her ex-boyfriend-turned-Senate candidate “has a Nazi tattoo on his chest.”
“It’s a Totenkopf,” she instructed them on Aug. 20, in line with a screenshot she shared with The Instances. “An precise one.”
“I’ll personally go marketing campaign for Collins,” she wrote. Two of her associates reacted with a crying laughing emoji. The remark was a joke, Ms. Fifield instructed The Instances.
Data present no proof of any relationship between Ms. Fifield and the Collins marketing campaign.
A Advanced Narrative
All through his marketing campaign, Mr. Platner has offered his life as a narrative of restoration and private development.
He has described himself as “self-medicating and consuming closely” and “turning into very emotionally distant” throughout his time within the army, which led to 2012, he says, and the years instantly afterward. A relationship with a girlfriend whereas he was serving within the Marines “completely fell aside as a result of I used to be only a wreck of a human being,” he said in an interview with The Times last month.
Then, in 2016, he returned to his small hometown, Sullivan, Maine. With remedy from the Division of Veterans Affairs, he obtained remedy for PTSD, nervousness and melancholy and started to construct a brand new life. In 2018, he took over an oyster farm from a household buddy.
Nonetheless, he stayed energetic on Reddit, providing a glimpse into his unvarnished considering in additional than 1,400 messages between 2016 and 2021, when he says he stopped posting.
Lots of his on-line messages indicated that Mr. Platner was nonetheless processing his experiences within the army. Others centered on oyster farming and the thrill of life in Maine. By 2021, he wrote, he not believed in “any of the patriotic nonsense” that made him wish to enlist, and had turn out to be “a agency believer that the very best factor an individual can do is assist their neighbors and dwell a loving life.”
“I’m a vegetable rising, psychedelics taking socialist today,” he wrote. “Nonetheless obtained the weapons although, I don’t belief the fascists to behave politely.” He has since mentioned he abhors political violence.
However his relationships with girls have remained sophisticated.
In November 2023, Mr. Platner married Amy Gertner, a former instructor from close to his hometown.
One 12 months later, an nameless Fb consumer went on a non-public web page referred to as “Are we relationship the identical man” and shared a picture of Mr. Platner, smiling broadly and sporting a T-shirt with line drawings of oysters.
“Ghosted me previously,” learn the message, dated Nov. 4, 2024. “Then popped up on a special relationship app. I’m involved he might have a big different on the market.”
The feedback drew replies from not less than six girls, a number of of whom famous that he was married, in line with screenshots posted by The Maine Wire, a conservative media outlet. Ms. Racicot, who was one of many girls who commented on the chain, confirmed that the put up was actual, as did a second girl who commented on it.
Requested in regards to the put up in a follow-up interview this spring, Ms. Racicot, who mentioned she agreed with lots of Mr. Platner’s insurance policies, mentioned she had an off-and-on relationship with Mr. Platner and had optimistic reminiscences.
However she was not shocked, she mentioned, when she noticed the incendiary feedback he had made about girls which have surfaced through the marketing campaign. “I used to be like, that is sensible,” she mentioned. “This individual doesn’t respect girls.”
Ms. Racicot additionally mentioned that in 2021 he arrived at her home drunk, after she had requested him to not come over. She declined to elaborate, however mentioned she reduce off contact quickly after that episode and located his conduct “reckless” and “unsettling.”
Final week, The Wall Street Journal and The Times detailed Ms. Gertner’s efforts to warn his marketing campaign workers about some probably explosive data within the early days of his candidacy. Her husband, she mentioned, had been exchanging sexual messages with a number of different girls.
Mr. Platner sought to discredit elements of the stories, however acknowledged that “Amy and I went via one thing arduous — due to me.” And Ms. Gertner, who had turn out to be a extra seen presence in his marketing campaign in latest weeks, posted a direct-to-camera video defending her husband and her marriage. “No marriage is ideal, and I don’t need an ideal marriage,” she mentioned. “I need my marriage, and I wish to be married to Graham.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Platner was asked by Democratic senators in Washington in private meetings if there was anything controversial in his background. He assured them there was nothing, however he predicted his adversaries would lie about him, in line with an individual conversant in the non-public discussions.
On the marketing campaign path, Mr. Platner has constantly labored to reassure voters who’ve been rattled by what they’ve examine his messy private historical past. He has said that he had not lived a “very sophisticated” life.
“I’ve loads of ex-girlfriends,” he instructed voters at a city corridor in late April. “They’re all nonetheless my associates.”
Reporting and analysis was contributed by Reid J. Epstein, Kitty Bennett, Kirsten Noyes and Aric Toler.
