Platner’s Sexting Scandal Leads to Fresh Round of Backbiting Among Democrats Over Critical Senate Race

The presumptive Democratic nominee for Maine’s U.S. Senate race, Graham Platner, is facing renewed criticism over personal actions — this time, the disclosure that he had been sending sexual messages to women who were not his wife early on in his marriage. The new reports about those messages have Democrats going after one another online about whether or not it was smart to take a risk on Mr. Platner this year. Mr. Platner, who has never held elected office, is a Marine and oyster farmer from Sullivan, Maine. His stridently progressive opinions on everything from health care to foreign policy led many Democrats to swoon, which eventually helped push Governor Janet Mills — the favored candidate of Senate Democratic leadership — out of the primary race. With Ms. Mills gone, Mr. Platner is now the presumptive nominee. However, he has had to explain several questionable decisions, including tattooing himself with a Nazi symbol and posting a barrage of controversial Reddit posts relating to race, sexual assault, and among other issues.Reports of Mr. Platner’s sexting with at least a half-dozen women was first disclosed by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. A former campaign staffer for Mr. Platner told reporters about the texts after Mr. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, confided in the staffer before her husband entered the Senate race. Ms. Gertner says she told the aide about the texts in order to flag a potential political problem which could come up in the future. Mr. Platner was also active on the social media app Kik — a private messaging platform sometimes called “predator’s paradise” due to its history of being used to contact children or share child pornography anonymously. Just last year, the state of Nevada filed a civil lawsuit against the app for creating a “haven” for predators. By Sunday, Democrats online began taking shots at each other over questions about Mr. Platner’s viability as a U.S. Senate candidate, especially in a must-win state like Maine. Senator Susan Collins is the only Republican senator on the ballot this year who hails from a state won by Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. “It’s no one’s f–ing business what happened in Graham & Amy’s marriage before he was ever a candidate for office,” a political consultant for Mr. Platner, Morris Katz, wrote on X Saturday. “There should be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust, and prioritize vengeance over decency.”One nasty back-and-forth occurred between two of the country’s most well-known Democratic political staffers — Neera Tanden, a former senior advisory for the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and Jon Favreau, President Obama’s first White House speechwriter who now hosts the wildly popular “Pod Save America” podcast. On Saturday, Mr. Favreau wrote on X that people were well within their rights to not support Mr. Platner due to the sexting issue, though he argued that tangible policy outcomes should be their chief concern. “I’d just say that if the reason you don’t want to support a candidate is because he and his wife chose not to share that they went through marriage counseling to deal with infidelity, that’s your choice. But I do think there are other factors in the race that will have more of a direct impact on your life,” Mr. Favreau wrote. Ms. Tanden replied sarcastically, writing simply: “Because Republicans will definitely not weaponize this.”Mr. Favreau, in response, made clear that he did not appreciate that sarcasm. “Who said they won’t? What is the point of all your tweets about this? If you think Mills should get back in the race and you’d like the voters of Maine to all change their minds, just say so,” he wrote. Ms. Tanden replied that she was angry that Mr. Platner’s sexual messages to women now diminish Democrats’ chances of flipping Maine’s Senate seat. Mr. Favreau, however, said it is not a disqualifier. “If Maine voters feel like they can’t vote for him because of this, they can make that choice. I feel differently,” Mr. Favreau wrote. Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, dodged a question about Mr. Platner during an appearance on CNN Sunday morning. He said that he has never met Mr. Platner, and that it was incumbent on the people of Maine to elect someone they trust. “I will work with whoever the people of Maine elect,” Mr. Kim said. Senator Cory Booker, who is widely expected to run for president in 2028, told ABC News on Sunday that he has “concerns” about Mr. Platner’s actions, but argued that it was still critical to flip the Maine seat. “The guy has questions to answer and that’s what campaigns are for,” Mr. Booker said. With Democrats debating whether Mr. Platner’s actions are disqualifying, a former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer, suggested that the candidate is vying for the one job where moral bankruptcy is often more a feature than a bug.“If a man with Platner’s background applied to be a teacher, they wouldn’t give him the job. He’s on an app that targets teens. If he applied to be a cop, they wouldn’t give him the job. He’s not stable. If he wanted a job with a security clearance, he wouldn’t get it. He’s a communist. I guess he figures Congress is the only job he can get. Don’t let him in,” Mr. Fleischer posted.In a video posted to her husband’s campaign social media account on Saturday, Ms. Gertner says her anger did not lie with her husband, but with those who would seek to use details of their private lives in order to distract from an important political conversation. “It makes me really angry, disappointed, and I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is is running on,” Ms. Gertner said in a direct-to-camera video.

Platner’s Sexting Scandal Leads to Fresh Round of Backbiting Among Democrats Over Critical Senate Race

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