Embattled Maine Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner finally addressed the infidelity scandal roiling his campaign after putting his wife forward to answer for him in a solo video that critics likened to a hostage film.
Platner, 41, and wife Amy Gertner spoke briefly to News Center Maine Sunday after a campaign appearance in Portland, dismissing as “gossip” allegations that the horny oyster farmer exchanged sexually explicit messages with as many as a dozen women since the couple tied the knot in 2023.
“It’s no surprise to me that the establishment media outlets are just going to run gossip instead of wanting to talk about the things that actually matter in this race, which are the material realities that Mainers are working with,” said Platner, attempting to pin his personal failings on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for reporting them.
“Amy and I have a very loving and very happy marriage. They would very much like to try to rip that apart,” he claimed before rehashing his stump speech about closing hospitals, low pay for teachers and nurses and Mainers’ paychecks not going as far as they used to.
“But of course, the powers that be do not want us to talk about that, and so they’re just going to do gossip instead,” Platner concluded.
Asked directly if the allegations were inaccurate, Platner told the outlet: “The Wall Street Journal and New York Times ran stories without any evidence besides the gossip from a former staffer. I’m sorry, that’s frankly, journalistic malpractice.”
The Journal broke the story Saturday about Platner’s extramarital sexting — which his campaign has since admitted could include as many as six women — while also revealing he had an active account on private message app Kik, which users frequently employ to pursue hookups.
Platner’s profile image on Kik was a bathroom mirror selfie featuring him wearing only a towel
“We talked about things in Amy and I’s marriage that we’ve gone through over the years. We talked about that, because that’s our marriage, and we discussed it with the campaign,” Platner insisted.
In a bizarre twist to the story, Gertner was the one who tipped off campaign staffers about her husband’s activities.
Both controversies are the latest scandals to cast a shadow over Platner’s Senate campaign, in which the presumptive Democratic nominee holds a 7.8% edge over longtime incumbent Republican Susan Collins, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.
Last year, revelations emerged that Platner had a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Totenkopf, or “death’s head” symbol, used by the Nazi SS. Platner claimed to have gotten the tattoo during a drunken night out in Croatia in 2007 and denied knowing its Nazi links.
He later inked over it with a “Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs,” as he described it.
The Marine Corps veteran has also been dogged over offensive posts on his since-scrubbed Reddit account, in which he defended soldiers urinating on dead Taliban soldiers, said white Americans “actually are” racist and stupid, and mocked helmet-cam footage of a Purple Heart recipient who put himself in the line of enemy fire to draw heat away from his fellow soldiers.
“This video never gets old. Dumb mother—er didn’t deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat ass wheezing are available for all future infantrymen to witness and hold in contempt,” Platner posted on Reddit, years after the footage went viral.
Platner is expected to secure the Democratic nomination June 9, having no serious opponent after Maine Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the race April 30.
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