Graham Platner’s rebel bid for Senate in Maine was gathering steam final summer season when his marketing campaign was confronted with some doubtlessly explosive data.
Mr. Platner’s spouse, Amy Gertner, advised a senior marketing campaign aide that he had been exchanging sexual messages with a number of different ladies.
It was the type of revelation with the potential to break the political newcomer simply as his marketing campaign to unseat Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, was starting to resonate with voters, particularly in a state the place feminine voters make up a big share of the voters.
Mr. Platner’s exchanges with ladies had been confirmed by present and former marketing campaign officers, who gave completely different accounts of a few of the particulars. Ms. Gertner stated the couple, who had married in November 2023, based on the city clerk of Sullivan, Maine, was working by means of his indiscretions in marriage counseling.
Genevieve McDonald, a former state legislator who was the Platner marketing campaign’s political director earlier than leaving in October, stated Ms. Gertner reached out simply days earlier than a giant Labor Day rally with Senator Bernie Sanders, unbiased of Vermont, and was involved her husband’s habits may change into a political legal responsibility.
Ms. McDonald stated Ms. Gertner advised her that her husband had been exchanging sexual messages with as many as a dozen ladies.
A present Platner marketing campaign official stated Mr. Platner had been speaking with as much as six ladies. The conduct had stopped, the official stated, earlier than the marketing campaign launched.
The present official stated that the messages surfaced when Ms. McDonald requested Ms. Gertner if there was something she wished to share amid an inside vetting course of. Ms. Gertner advised the marketing campaign that the couple had handled the difficulty in counseling, based on the official.
The revelation threatened so as to add to Democratic anxieties concerning the state of the Maine race, which the occasion sees as essential to its possibilities of successful management of the Senate in November.
In a press release launched by the marketing campaign, Ms. Gertner steered that she had been betrayed by Ms. McDonald, saying she was “deeply damage” and bothered by “the invasion of our privateness.”
“I confided deeply private particulars about my marriage to somebody I thought of a pal,” she stated. “I trusted this individual with essentially the most personal chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage earlier than any marketing campaign was on our thoughts.”
“Our marriage as we speak is stronger than ever earlier than,” she added. “I do know the person I married and the husband he has been to me on the perfect and the worst days of my life. That hasn’t modified, and it received’t.”
On Saturday night, she additionally launched a prolonged direct-to-camera video acknowledging that the couple had confronted challenges, however saying that “our marriage counselor helps, my private counselor helps, Graham’s private counselor helps, and we work on our psychological well being daily.”
“No marriage is ideal, and I don’t need an ideal marriage,” stated Ms. Gertner, who filmed the video as she walked alongside a highway. “I would like my marriage, and I wish to be married to Graham.”
Ms. McDonald’s account of Ms. Gertner’s discovery of the messages and alerting the marketing campaign to them final summer season earlier than the rally with Mr. Sanders was confirmed by one other one that was advised concerning the messages on the time. The Wall Road Journal earlier reported the existence of the messages on Saturday afternoon.
Ms. McDonald shared with The New York Occasions what she stated was a screenshot of a textual content message alternate with Ms. Gertner that began within the early hours of Aug. 27, 2025. Ms. Gertner had despatched a message to a broader group, asking somebody from the marketing campaign to contact her, and Ms. McDonald provided to speak. Of their dialog, Ms. Gertner advised her concerning the messages, which she described as “sexting,” based on Ms. McDonald.
“The USA Senate isn’t a coaching floor for redemption,” Ms. McDonald stated. “It’s a place for confirmed leaders with ethical readability and integrity.”
Ms. McDonald was one in all three marketing campaign officers who resigned in October after revelations about controversial social media posts by Mr. Platner and scrutiny of a tattoo widely known as a Nazi image.
Within the months since then, regardless of a barrage of headlines about inflammatory remarks Mr. Platner made about ladies on-line years in the past — remarks for which he has apologized — the candidate went on to have a shocking rise to change into the presumptive Democratic nominee in one of many nation’s marquee Senate races.
His marketing campaign has change into a motion in Maine, and a few Democrats are already discussing Mr. Platner, a fiery populist running on his working-class credentialsas the way forward for the occasion.
But as he heads into a troublesome normal election battle in opposition to Ms. Collins, the incumbent, some Democrats stay anxious about how Mr. Platner, who acknowledges having a messy private historical past, will stand as much as scrutiny. It is a matter that voters have already raised with him straight on the marketing campaign path.
Republicans, for his or her half, are broadcasting a gradual drumbeat of previous Reddit posts wherein Mr. Platner insulted ladies, Black folks, white rural folks and others.
Mr. Platner has spoken overtly about struggling for years with post-traumatic stress dysfunction, melancholy and ingesting tied to a number of fight excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I used to be only a wreck of a human being,” he told The Times.
He sought remedy and has apologized for some incendiary posts on Reddit, urging Mainers to not choose him for “the worst factor I stated on the web, on my worst day 14 years in the past.”
However these on-line feedback have continued to canine Mr. Platner’s marketing campaign.
In 2013, he posted that girls afraid of rape mustn’t get so drunk that they “wind up having intercourse with somebody they don’t imply to,” a comment for which he has since apologized.
In one other submit, he responded to a cartoon about sexual assault within the navy, dismissing challenges confronted by service members who carry claims of rape.
“When each whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a function size movie, anybody who really thinks the navy is purposefully overlaying up rape,” he wrote, “is clearly each an fool and junior sufficient in rank or life expertise to assume it issues.”
In January of 2020, he waded right into a debate over whether or not West Coast Marines had been extra “chill,” arguing that “they get to bang LA chicks, whores in TJ, and hit up Vegas,” an obvious reference to Tijuana, Mexico.
Mr. Platner deleted his remark historical past forward of his marketing campaign kickoff, although his posts resurfaced anyway.
As the first heated up, Gov. Janet Mills, his Democratic opponent, seized on his posts, releasing advertisements that includes ladies responding to his remarks about rape with disgust.
Mr. Platner apologized for the posts, saying he was “horrified” when he reread them.
“I didn’t acknowledge in them myself or the person that I’m as we speak,” he stated.
His marketing campaign organized an online event aimed toward serving to its feminine supporters speak with their networks about Mr. Platner’s posture towards ladies, suggesting language they may use to allay the issues of their family and friends.
And, within the spring, Ms. Gertner, who’s on the marketing campaign payroll, started to play a extra seen function on the path. In April, she launched Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, at a marketing campaign rally in Portland, Maine, highlighting the struggles folks within the state face to obtain well being care, afford housing and function small companies.
“The Maine that we love a lot is below assault,” Ms. Gertner stated. “And I do know that he’s the fitting individual to do the job.”
The couple has been vocal about their in vitro fertilization treatments and struggles to start out a household. Ms. Gertner talked about these therapies in her assertion on Saturday.
“It’s no secret that Graham and I’ve struggled on our fertility journey,” Ms. Gertner stated. “We did the onerous work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. We had been sincere with one another in ways in which weren’t simple. And we got here by means of it.”
The advertisements Ms. Mills ran about Mr. Platner’s on-line statements didn’t enhance her standing. In late April, weeks earlier than the June 9 main, she give up the competition, turning Mr. Platner into the presumptive nominee. Supporters of Mr. Platner noticed his political energy as proof that voters had processed and forgiven his previous statements.
Republicans are within the early levels of testing that concept, believing they will drive a picture of Mr. Platner, who’s at present main within the polls within the Democratic-leaning state, as unfit to serve.
To date, there are few indicators that Mr. Platner’s earlier remarks about ladies are hurting him. A poll launched final week from the College of New Hampshire confirmed Mr. Platner main Ms. Collins by 9 factors — and by 20 factors amongst ladies.
Nonetheless, the difficulty is weighing on some voters.
Towards the top of a city corridor assembly in Sabattus, Maine, in April, the night time earlier than Ms. Mills dropped out, a Platner supporter named Carolyn Greeley requested him a blunt query.
“Is there something you might want to share with us?” she requested.
Ms. Greeley was bothered by his previous feedback about ladies, she stated, and wished assurances that there wouldn’t be extra damaging revelations to come back.
Mr. Platner was unequivocal in his response. Republicans would definitely “make stuff up” about him, he stated. He had dated, had girlfriends, “gone by means of life.” However every thing had already been “dragged up,” he promised the gang.
“In my previous, there’s not some huge, darkish secret,” he stated.
Requested in an interview how he could possibly be so sure that there was no different data that will come out about him after the occasion, Mr. Platner was terse.
“I lived my life,” he stated. “That’s how.”
