We don’t know what Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, wrote in his sexually explicit texts with women other than his wife—six, according to his campaign; a dozen, according to an ex-aide—but do we need to? The glaring question that the texts pose to voters about the presumptive Democratic nominee at this point in a pivotal midterm race is: Are we really going to do this again?
In 2016, voters were asked to choose between a populist candidate dogged by questions about his integrity, judgment, decency, civility, empathy, and respect for everyone from complete strangers to his own wife, and an overqualified, glass-ceiling-smashing woman. When voters opted for Donald Trump, Democrats were outraged. Now, faced with the choice between Platner and Governor Janet Mills, Maine Democrats have largely backed the populist themselves.
Mills suspended her primary bid in April amid a cash shortfall and concerns that she’s too old and old-school to win. At age 78, she understandably gives pause to many Democrats still suffering from Joe Biden–related PTSD. But she’s also one of the few political leaders who have stood up to Trump. A former state attorney general and district attorney, she did it to defend the rule of law.
[Mike Nelson: Condemning a Nazi tattoo shouldn’t be this hard]
Mills, though, is an endangered species of American politician—one whose playbook the Democrats ought to be following, instead of the one they seem to have stolen from the GOP. In her first term as Maine’s first woman governor, she made a succession of unpopular decisions as she led the state through COVID. “It takes real guts to make decisions that have an overt negative political implication on the abstract proposition that it will save lives,” Angus King, Maine’s independent U.S. Senator and a former governor, told me in 2023. (I wrote a book that year about Mills and her COVID correspondence with a constituent, who sent her a weekly letter of support throughout the first year of the pandemic.) The governor’s tough choices paid off, and Maine emerged with some of the most successful health and economic metrics in the country. Mills won reelection by a historic margin.
I was astonished that she allowed me to incorporate her unedited and candid journals from that time into my narrative. She is unusually at ease with herself in public and private, and has cultivated a relatable image, memorably wearing L.L. Bean duck boots to her second inauguration.
Platner, by comparison, has no experience in elected office. He has already asked his state to forgive and forget a list of lapses, including an incendiary tattoo he claims he didn’t know was a Nazi symbol when he got it, and a slew of angry, misogynistic, or otherwise offensive Reddit posts he’s disavowed.
Add to that the revelation that in late 2023, his wife, Amy Gertner, caught him sexting with multiple other women. Notably, it was she who disclosed this to his campaign, not the candidate. Now Gertner is defending her husband in part by pointing out that he sent the texts “in the early days of our marriage,” as if that is somehow a mitigating, not an aggravating, factor.
Unlike some politicians who have been rejected by voters for their past indiscretions, or gotten reelected despite them, Platner has apologized and shown promising awareness of his own human fallibility. He has also offered voters some compelling ideas, and inspired people hungering for leadership to remember their own agency. That has been enough, so far, for his supporters to overlook his inexperience and accept each new apology. Platner’s campaign events have attracted swarms of Maine voters, and he’s won endorsements from a cadre of Democratic Party leaders drawn to his charisma and candor, who seem to have mistaken him for the next John F. Kennedy.
[Tyler Austin Harper: How ‘big tent’ are Democrats willing to go?]
Democratic leaders seem determined not to allow anything to get in the way of winning Maine’s Senate seat, even if that requires willful blindness toward Platner’s lengthening record of indiscretions. In response to questions about Platner’s extramarital sexting, Senator Bernie Sanders said, “I think it might be a good idea if we focused on the important issues facing the working families of Maine” such as gas prices, health care, and groceries. Senator Elizabeth Warren similarly told reporters she preferred to focus on the “price of gasoline.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had previously supported Mills, met with Platner in the thick of the sexting fallout, and remained focused on defeating the incumbent Republican senator in November. “We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate,” he said. And Republicans are clearly worried that he’s right, already spending twice as much on the race as Democrats have.
But Democrats don’t need to repeat the mistakes made by Republicans. There is an alternative, at least for Mainers: As Mills reminded them last Sunday, her name is still on the ballot. The primary election takes place on Tuesday. And so Maine voters still have a chance to send a message to the party brass continuing to coalesce around candidates who are not merely imperfect but entitled or unfit. We don’t have to do this again.
The post Maine Has a Graham Platner Problem appeared first on The Atlantic.
