Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Maine, has made his first public appearance since reports emerged that he had exchanged sexually explicit messages with several women during the early months of his marriage, while he and his wife were undergoing IVF treatment.
The 40-year-old appeared before supporters at a campaign event on Sunday afternoon, dressed casually in a polo shirt, jeans and a trucker hat. In a post accompanying the appearance, he said he was taking his campaign to the front porches of Maine. He is seeking to unseat the long-serving Republican senator Susan Collins, a contest Democrats regard as important to their hopes of winning control of the chamber in November’s midterm elections.
The disclosures stem from an internal episode within Platner’s own campaign. According to the Daily Mail, his wife, Amy Gertner, last year told campaign staff she had found that her husband had been messaging a number of women. The New York Times reported that she raised the matter with Genevieve McDonald, then the campaign’s political director, while The Wall Street Journal reported that the conversation took place shortly before Platner was due to appear at a Labor Day weekend rally with Senator Bernie Sanders, amid concern it could become a liability. Multiple accounts indicate the disclosure came during an internal vetting process as aides examined their own candidate’s record.
Both Platner and Gertner have responded forcefully since the reports surfaced on Saturday. In a video shared to the campaign’s account, Gertner — who married Platner in November 2023 — said she was angry and disappointed, and described as shameful the decision of some media outlets and individuals to circulate what she characterised as gossip rather than focusing on the issues her husband is campaigning on, such as healthcare, education and childcare. She insisted the couple had a strong marriage and spoke about the strain of starting one while also facing infertility and a Senate campaign, adding that they had sought help from a marriage counsellor and their own therapists.
In a separate statement reported by CNN and CBS News, Gertner directed her criticism at the former aide in whom she had confided, saying she had trusted that person with a private chapter of her life and felt deeply hurt by what she called a betrayal and an invasion of privacy. Platner, in his own video, apologised to those who had been offended by the reports.
McDonald, who left the campaign last October, took a markedly different view. She told The Wall Street Journal that the messages had been described to her as sexting, and remarked that the Senate was not a training ground for redemption. Campaign officials, according to several outlets, had at the time regarded the matter as a private issue for the couple to resolve through counselling.
Despite the controversy, Sanders has reaffirmed his support. Writing on X on Saturday, he likened Platner — a Marine Corps veteran and oyster farmer with no prior political experience — to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City, and argued that a rural state such as Maine could elect candidates like Platner and the gubernatorial hopeful Troy Jackson.
The episode is the latest difficulty for an insurgent campaign that has drawn national attention. Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee following the withdrawal of Maine governor Janet Mills from the primary, has previously faced scrutiny over a chest tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, which he covered last October and has said he acquired during his time in the Marines, as well as over past online comments. He faces a primary on 9 June before any general election contest with Collins
