A week has passed since Amy Gertner took a walk through the Maine countryside and recorded a video message offering a staunch, if weary, defence of her husband, US Senate candidate Graham Platner. A few days earlier, both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal had published reports that Platner had sent sexually explicit texts to several women in the early stages of their marriage, in 2023. The information had been shared by Gertner with the Democratic campaign as part of a confidential campaign disclosure.
Over the course of a year the 41-year-old, denim-wearing marine veteran and oyster farmer has become a contender through compelling town halls that have thrilled disenchanted Maine Democrats. But this was the latest controversy pinned to Platner, who had been forced to explain away objectionable Reddit posts from decades ago and a “Totenkopf” skull-and-crossbones chest tattoo with historical Nazi overtones.
His surging poll numbers indicated Mainers were willing to forgive what Platner explained were grievous errors of judgment made during the severe psychological burden of serving in Afghanistan and Iraq as a young infantryman. But on Thursday night of this week, he was forced to respond to another Times report carrying the headline “Several women who dated Graham Platner recall ‘unsettling’ behaviour".
In a statement, Platner reiterated that throughout his campaign he had been candid about “ a very dark” period in his life characterised by PTSD and heavy alcohol use and was, he says, “a far from perfect boyfriend”. But he bluntly denied what he described as “serious accusations”.
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Many Mainers have said part of Platner’s appeal is that he looks and sounds nothing like a typical senate-destined politician. His lightning rise was enough to convince his Democratic primary opponent, current Maine governor and grandee Janet Mills, to suspend her campaign. But, as the 78-year-old Mills reminded voters who may be having a crisis of belief before Tuesday night’s primary, she remains on the ballot.
Gertner has played a vital support role in the Maine campaign in presenting a more rounded impression of her husband for people hungry for an alternative. At a rally event attended by The Irish Times in Portland recently, she described herself as “a Mainer, a teacher” who admitted that if she had been told a year ago that she and her husband would find themselves amid one of the most high-profile political races in the country, “I would have laughed you out of the room”.
Platner was approached to run by a local Democratic consortium who called to their house at the inexplicable hour of 6.30am. They had a decision to make, she told the crowd: “Do we give up this beautiful little life that we built together?” She described how they mulled it over for days before Gertner, while frying eggs, suddenly told Platner he had to run. She described their experience of living in Sullivan, in eastern Maine; driving an hour for fertility treatment; watching her fellow teachers exit classrooms because of unsustainable conditions and local iterations of the national problem of skyrocketing house prices, increasing debt and savage inflation. The campaign, she told the crowd, though exhilarating, “feels like we are locked in a battle against a political machine backed by billionaires”.
It all led to last week’s video and her response to the media reports relating to the leaking of confidential information.
“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 taking on like healthcare, and education, and childcare. I am walking up and down my road right now and it’s like my 20th take. This is very hard to do. Being married is hard. Being newly married is hard. Being newly married and going through infertility and a senate campaign is hard. I don’t even know if I have the right words to describe what we have been going through. It’s extra shitty because people in Maine want affordable gas; they want to see their doctor when they are sick.”
The snippet was inexpert and authentic and worth the advice of a thousand political gurus.
On Tuesday, Platner took a trip to Washington to meet privately with Democrat elders, including senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. He was almost certainly instructed to bring his closet so it could be ransacked for further skeletons. Afterwards, Schumer remained tight-lipped, repeating only that Platner had his endorsement.
But the moment presents a dilemma for the Democratic leadership who have enjoyed proclaiming from the moral high ground on the probity of many Republican political figures, from Texas senate candidate Ken Paxton to president Donald Trump.
And the entire national power struggle for senate control suddenly seems to be surging through the Maine race. Susan Collins has held her seat for the Republican Party for 29 years. Much of Platner’s manifesto is based on the argument that employment, social and civic structures throughout Maine have badly declined over those three decades. Platner’s attacks on Collins have been relentless while the incumbent has, so far, behaved as though she is scarcely aware of her expected opponent’s existence. She has maintained a regal indifference to the outcome of the Democratic primary. After the latest Platner controversy broke, prominent Republican politicians and commentators reached for their prayer books and shook their heads in reproach at the idea that the Democrats would seek to send such a figure to Congress. Collins confined her comments to a telling: “It’s a reflection of character.”
Her campaign, which will intensify over the summer, will portray her as a reliable and proven representative for Maine in Washington. A recent WSJ piece lauded her record for showing up, casting her 10,000 consecutive votes without missing a roll call since she entered office in January 1997. She has managed to straddle the fine line between expressing reservations and even clashing with Trump, specifically over cabinet nominations and the Iran war, without ever alienating herself. The rap against Collins, and her frequent position of being “concerned” over certain GOP developments, is that she is always in lock step with the party.
“I find it interesting that the Republican super-PACs have already purchased $99 million in TV ads against this guy Graham Platner,” said Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who has campaigned in Maine for Platner.
“In a small state, that’s an astronomical sum of money and more money is going to come in,” Sanders told CNN.
“Why do they want to beat Graham Platner? Because they understand in fact that control of the Senate may revolve around who wins in Maine. And they want to beat him in the worst possible way. I think what people of this country want now are senators who focus on the needs of working-class people, who are tired of a system where billionaires buy elections, where the rich get much richer while 60 per cent of the people struggle to put food on the table.”
Of the controversy, Sanders pointed out that Gertner was “standing by her husband”.
“Let’s understand that nobody is perfect. This guy has done four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has had his share of problems.”
On Memorial Day, Sanders visited Platner’s hometown of Sullivan. Afterwards, the two men sat down for a chat in a boat shed, framed by a fishing boat propped on supports, as if they’d just now taken a break from repairs. Their conversation formed part of a mini-documentary that presented Maine as a bucolic paradise threatened by opaque billionaire forces. Platner recalled his mother taking him to town meetings when he was a child. “Until I left New England I didn’t realise that the town meeting was kind of a New England thing coming from our congregational, puritan routes. It’s the most direct form of democracy.”
Platner’s blitz of town halls has been instrumental in catching the attention of Maine’s 1.4 million residents, who have watched their wild and beautiful state struggle more than any other to recover from the global depression of 2008.
It’s population has never been higher but it’s state GPD is sluggish and costs are climbing. Platner has convinced enough fellow Mainers that he has the stuff to change this. Before the latest controversy, he was polling at 76 per cent against Mills. Strategists from both parties will be keen to see whether that figure holds after the formality of Tuesday night’s primary.
And polls also suggest a narrow lead over Collins. But the past week have seen those projected numbers narrow to just a 4 per cent margin (49 per cent to 45 per cent). Sanders warned Platner he could never hope to raise funds to match the Collins campaign. “Taking on a lot of money is not easy.”
If there are any further damaging revelations about Platner, it may become impossible.
“It has never crossed our mind to drop out of this thing,” Platner said on a Thursday night. “What we’ve built up here, it’s robust. It’s very strong. Even the past couple of days, the outpouring of support Amy and I have received is deeply humbling. We have people dropping off food at our house. Everybody is concerned about our wellbeing because they feel we are being attacked in some way and they want to help protect us. And it is that kind of feeling of community that embodies this whole campaign. And that’s why we are going to beat Susan Collins in November.”
