Graham Platner’s insurgent bid for Senate in Maine was gathering steam last summer when his campaign was confronted with some potentially explosive information.
Mr. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, told a senior campaign aide that he had been exchanging sexual messages with multiple other women.
It was the kind of revelation with the potential to damage the political newcomer just as his campaign to unseat Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, was beginning to resonate with voters, especially in a state where female voters make up a large share of the electorate.
Mr. Platner’s exchanges with women were confirmed by current and former campaign officials, who gave different accounts of some of the details. Ms. Gertner said the couple, who had married in November 2023, according to the town clerk of Sullivan, Maine, was working through his indiscretions in marriage counseling.
Genevieve McDonald, a former state legislator who was the Platner campaign’s political director before leaving in October, said Ms. Gertner reached out just days before a big Labor Day rally with Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and was concerned her husband’s behavior could become a political liability.
Ms. McDonald said Ms. Gertner told her that her husband had been exchanging sexual messages with as many as a dozen women.
A current Platner campaign official said Mr. Platner had been communicating with up to six women. The conduct had stopped, the official said, before the campaign launched.
The current official said that the messages surfaced when Ms. McDonald asked Ms. Gertner if there was anything she wanted to share amid an internal vetting process. Ms. Gertner told the campaign that the couple had dealt with the issue in counseling, according to the official.
The revelation threatened to add to Democratic anxieties about the state of the Maine race, which the party sees as critical to its chances of winning control of the Senate in November.
In a statement released by the campaign, Ms. Gertner suggested that she had been betrayed by Ms. McDonald, saying she was “deeply hurt” and bothered by “the invasion of our privacy.”
“I confided deeply personal details about my marriage to someone I considered a friend,” she said. “I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind.”
“Our marriage today is stronger than ever before,” she added. “I know the man I married and the husband he has been to me on the best and the worst days of my life. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t.”
On Saturday evening, she also released a lengthy direct-to-camera video acknowledging that the couple had faced challenges, but saying that “our marriage counselor helps, my personal counselor helps, Graham’s personal counselor helps, and we work on our mental health every day.”
“No marriage is perfect, and I don’t want a perfect marriage,” Ms. Gertner said. “I want my marriage, and I want to be married to Graham.”
In the video, filmed as she walked outdoors and fended off insects, she said that she thought it was “shameful behavior to spend time and energy and resources on negative ads and negative stories on Graham when all he’s trying to do is improve the lives of people who work for a living.”
Ms. McDonald’s account of Ms. Gertner’s discovery of the messages, and her alerting the campaign to them last summer before the rally with Mr. Sanders, was confirmed by another person who was told about the messages at the time. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the existence of the messages on Saturday afternoon.
Ms. McDonald shared with The New York Times what she said was a screenshot of a text message exchange with Ms. Gertner that started in the early hours of Aug. 27, 2025. Ms. Gertner had sent a message to a broader group, asking someone from the campaign to contact her, and Ms. McDonald offered to talk. In their conversation, Ms. Gertner told her about the messages, which she described as “sexting,” according to Ms. McDonald.
“The United States Senate is not a training ground for redemption,” Ms. McDonald said. “It is a place for proven leaders with moral clarity and integrity.”
Ms. McDonald was one of three campaign officials who resigned in October after revelations about controversial social media posts by Mr. Platner and scrutiny of a tattoo widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.
In the months since then, despite a barrage of headlines about inflammatory remarks Mr. Platner made about women online years ago — remarks for which he has apologized — the candidate went on to have a stunning rise to become the presumptive Democratic nominee in one of the nation’s marquee Senate races.
His campaign has become a movement in Maine, and some Democrats are already discussing Mr. Platner, a fiery populist running on his working-class credentials, as the future of the party.
Yet as he heads into a tough general election fight against Ms. Collins, the incumbent, some Democrats remain anxious about how Mr. Platner, who acknowledges having a messy personal history, will stand up to scrutiny. It is an issue that voters have already raised with him directly on the campaign trail.
Republicans, for their part, are broadcasting a steady drumbeat of old Reddit posts in which Mr. Platner insulted women, Black people, white rural people and others.
Mr. Platner has spoken openly about struggling for years with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and drinking tied to multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I was just a wreck of a human being,” he told The Times.
He sought therapy and has apologized for some incendiary posts on Reddit, urging Mainers not to judge him for “the worst thing I said on the internet, on my worst day 14 years ago.”
But those online comments have continued to dog Mr. Platner’s campaign.
In 2013, he posted that women afraid of rape should not get so drunk that they “wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to,” a remark for which he has since apologized.
In another post, he responded to a cartoon about sexual assault in the military, dismissing challenges faced by service members who bring claims of rape.
“When every whisper of a misplaced hand brings down a feature length film, anyone who actually thinks the military is purposefully covering up rape,” he wrote, “is clearly both an idiot and junior enough in rank or life experience to think it matters.”
In January of 2020, he waded into a debate over whether West Coast Marines were more “chill,” arguing that “they get to bang LA chicks, whores in TJ, and hit up Vegas,” an apparent reference to Tijuana, Mexico.
Mr. Platner deleted his comment history ahead of his campaign kickoff, though his posts resurfaced anyway.
As the primary heated up, Gov. Janet Mills, his Democratic opponent, seized on his posts, releasing ads featuring women responding to his remarks about rape with disgust.
Mr. Platner apologized for the posts, saying he was “horrified” when he reread them.
“I did not recognize in them myself or the man that I am today,” he said.
His campaign organized an online event aimed at helping its female supporters talk with their networks about Mr. Platner’s posture toward women, suggesting language they could use to allay the concerns of their friends and family.
And, in the spring, Ms. Gertner, who is on the campaign payroll, began to play a more visible role on the trail. In April, she introduced Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, at a campaign rally in Portland, Maine, highlighting the struggles people in the state face to receive health care, afford housing and operate small businesses.
“The Maine that we love so much is under attack,” Ms. Gertner said. “And I know that he’s the right person to do the job.”
The couple has been vocal about their in vitro fertilization treatments and struggles to start a family. Ms. Gertner mentioned those treatments in her statement on Saturday.
“It is no secret that Graham and I have struggled on our fertility journey,” Ms. Gertner said. “We did the hard work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. We were honest with each other in ways that weren’t easy. And we came through it.”
The ads Ms. Mills ran about Mr. Platner’s online statements did not improve her standing. In late April, weeks before the June 9 primary, she quit the contest, turning Mr. Platner into the presumptive nominee. Supporters of Mr. Platner saw his political strength as evidence that voters had processed and forgiven his past statements.
Republicans are in the early stages of testing that theory, believing they can drive an image of Mr. Platner, who is currently leading in the polls in the Democratic-leaning state, as unfit to serve.
So far, there are few signs that Mr. Platner’s previous remarks about women are hurting him. A poll released last week from the University of New Hampshire showed Mr. Platner leading Ms. Collins by nine points — and by 20 points among women.
Still, the issue is weighing on some voters.
Toward the end of a town hall meeting in Sabattus, Maine, in April, the night before Ms. Mills dropped out, a Platner supporter named Carolyn Greeley asked him a blunt question.
“Is there anything you need to share with us?” she asked.
Ms. Greeley was bothered by his past comments about women, she said, and wanted assurances that there would not be more damaging revelations to come.
Mr. Platner was unequivocal in his response. Republicans would certainly “make stuff up” about him, he said. He had dated, had girlfriends, “gone through life.” But everything had already been “dragged up,” he promised the crowd.
“In my past, there is not some big, dark secret,” he said.
Asked in an interview how he could be so certain that there was no other information that would come out about him after the event, Mr. Platner was terse.
“I lived my life,” he said. “That’s how.”
Katie Glueck is a Times national political reporter.
Lisa Lerer is a national political reporter for The Times, based in New York. She has covered American politics for nearly two decades.
A version of this article appears in print on May 31, 2026, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Platner’s Texts With Women Rattled Campaign as Senate Race Took Off
As Democrats Worry About Senate Race, Platner Attacks Reports About Sexual Messages
Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, struck a defiant posture on Sunday in response to reports that he had sent sexual messages to women outside his marriage, accusing a former aide of false claims and news outlets of “journalistic malpractice.”
In his first public comments on the matter, Mr. Platner said “establishment media outlets” were focused on “gossip” instead of issues such as the shuttering of child care facilities, low wages for teachers and nurses and “the fact that everybody down here continues to work harder and longer and get less.”
He sought to discredit news reports about the messages. Asked by reporters whether they were true, he said: “No. This is the amazing part. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times ran stories without any evidence besides the gossip from a former staffer. I’m sorry, that’s — that’s frankly journalistic malpractice. We pushed back on it.”
The Times report, which was published on Saturday, cited a current campaign official as well as a former one. Both said that Mr. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, had told the former campaign official, Genevieve McDonald, soon after he began his bid, that he had exchanged sexual messages with multiple other women.
The current official, who was granted anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the record, said on Sunday evening that Mr. Platner was not disputing that there had been discussions of sexual messages he had sent to other women while married, but rather the number of women involved.
The Times article quoted Ms. McDonald — a onetime state legislator who was the Platner campaign’s political director before leaving in October — who said that he had exchanged messages with as many as a dozen women. And it noted that the current campaign official had said Mr. Platner had been communicating with up to six women.
Mr. Platner said Ms. McDonald was not being truthful in her account. Ms. McDonald declined to comment. In a statement on Sunday evening, Mr. Platner addressed his marriage.
“Amy and I went through something hard — because of me. We did the work, and I’m grateful for her every hour of every day,” Mr. Platner said in the statement. “Our opponents want politics to be empty of content and empty of actual change — and beating that is exactly what our movement is about.”
Mr. Platner spent Sunday on the campaign trail in Portland, joining a rally in the morning, attending a canvass launch and appearing at a gathering of leaders in the immigrant community, according to his aides.
The Maine Senate seat is seen as a key to the Democrats’ hopes of winning control of the Senate. Mr. Platner is trying to unseat Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, in a state that President Trump lost by about seven percentage points in 2024.
Some Democrats worry that revelations about Mr. Platner’s past could hurt their chances of regaining control of the Senate.
“Yeah, I have concerns,” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said on ABC’s “This Week,” when asked if he was worried that Mr. Platner’s messy personal history could hurt Democrats in the midterms. “That guy has questions to answer. And that’s what campaigns are for.”
Mr. Booker added that “so much is riding on Democrats’ taking control of the Senate,” saying that the country needed a check on an “out-of-control president” who he suggested was driving up costs of health care, child care and gas.
Mr. Platner’s fiery progressive campaign has become a movement in Maine. But his personal history, which includes making inflammatory statements online about women and having a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol that he has covered up, has threatened to amplify Democratic anxieties about his contest.
On Sunday, Mr. Booker and other Senate Democrats who appeared on morning TV shows were left to answer questions about the reports a day earlier regarding the sexual messages sent by Mr. Platner. And officials with the campaign arm of Senate Republicans seized on the news, circulating reports and attacking Mr. Platner.
Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, said that he was not focusing on the Maine race and that he had never met Mr. Platner. “I will work with whoever the people of Maine elect,” Mr. Kim said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But I hope that they elect somebody that is going to stand up to this president.”
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, defended Mr. Platner, saying on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Mr. Platner, a combat veteran who says he has struggled with PTSD, had “put his life on the line for this country.”
“He has certainly admitted that he has made mistakes,” Mr. Murphy said. “But I think this is going to be a pretty clear contrast in Maine between somebody who has spent his life protecting us versus somebody who seems to be protecting Donald Trump’s corruption.”
Ms. Gertner said on Saturday that her marriage was strong, and she denounced “negative stories on Graham.”
“No marriage is perfect, and I don’t want a perfect marriage,” Ms. Gertner said in a direct-to-camera video published on Saturday evening. “I want my marriage, and I want to be married to Graham.”
Lisa Lerer is a national political reporter for The Times, based in New York. She has covered American politics for nearly two decades.
Katie Glueck is a Times national political reporter.
A version of this article appears in print on June 1, 2026, Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Booker Notes His ‘Concerns’ About Platner And His Texts
More on the 2026 Midterm Elections
Maine Senate Race: Graham Platner’s insurgent bid for Senate in Maine was gathering steam last summer when his campaign was confronted with some potentially explosive information. His wife, Amy Gertner, told a senior campaign aide that he had been exchanging sexual messages with multiple other women.
Democrats’ Hope in Deep-Red Iowa: The state’s Senate primary features two candidates with compelling personal stories — one an Eagle Scout and the other a Paralympic champion. Both have stressed their independence.
Trump’s Pick to Lead California: Steve Hilton grabbed headlines when he worked in conservative politics in Britain. His American political renaissance in the California governor’s race has bemused former British colleagues and rivals.
Dan Sullivan vs. Dan Sullivan: Two candidates with the same name will be on the ballot seeking the same seat in Alaska’s Senate primary. “It’s going to be confusing,” one Republican said.
How 9 Voters Are Handling Their Finances: The spiraling cost of everyday necessities have forced many Americans to do more with less. The New York Times asked a swath of voters about how they’re weathering the financial storm.
U.S. Politics: News and Analysis
Here’s a look at the political landscape across America.
Political Earthquakes Across the South: As Republicans rush to redraw the region’s congressional maps, some voters are confused and concerned, and civil rights activists are gearing up for the fight of a generation.
Gretchen Whitmer: The governor of Michigan and one of the country’s most prominent Democrats has been conciliatory with President Trump. As she mulls the future, her party is split on that approach.
Massie Opens Door to 2028 Run: Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who lost his primary, filed papers for another candidacy but said he was not sure which office he might seek.
Hunter Biden and Candace Owens: In a nearly two-hour conversation, Biden discussed his addiction to drugs and alcohol, and Owens apologized for her past remarks about him.
Democratic Governor Censured: The Colorado State Democratic Party, reflecting the anger of rank-and-file Democratic voters, rebuked Gov. Jared Polis over his decision to release Tina Peters from prison.
