By Jim Geraghty
Monday, June 01, 2026
Once a Maine Democrat has made up his mind that a
candidate having a Nazi tattoo for 18 years isn’t a reason to not support or
vote for him, none of us should be surprised that some garden-variety
infidelity isn’t going to shake them loose, either.
At 3:16 p.m. on Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported:
Days after Graham Platner announced
his Maine Senate bid, his wife informed the campaign about a potential
political problem she had previously discovered on the oyster farmer’s phone:
sexually explicit texts with several women, according to people familiar with
the matter.
Amy Gertner, who married Platner
in 2023, told the campaign about messages she had found early in their marriage
in the spring of 2025. In late August, as some aides were conducting opposition
research on their own candidate, Gertner disclosed the texts to a campaign aide
to make sure they didn’t pose a risk to her husband’s nascent campaign, those
people said.
Shortly thereafter, the New York Times reported more details:
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.
I love the use of the phrase, “up to six.” If Platner had
been sexting with three women, the campaign would have said it was three. If it
was four, they would say it was four. If the official campaign statement is “up
to six,” it means it is six. No married man is going to overestimate the
number of women he’s sexting. This shouldn’t be that hard to count; this isn’t
the decennial national census.
Platner launched his U.S. Senate campaign in Maine on August
19; as I wrote this weekend, “this is a long-forgotten youthful
indiscretion from last summer.” The last married candidate whom I can remember
pledging that he had stopped online sexual communications with six to ten women was former congressman Anthony Weiner. Things turned out very badly for him.
In an interview with local television, Platner said,
“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 uh… that’s
frankly journalistic malpractice.”
Except . . . his campaign verified the authenticity of
the messages.
He added, “the establishment media outlets are just gonna
run gossip instead of wanting to talk about the things that actually matter in
this race.”
The inconvenience of a fact does not make it gossip. NBC
News, not exactly a Republican opposition research shop, reported:
In addition, NBC News verified a Kik account tied to Platner after it visually
matched the tattoos visible in the profile photo to tattoos on his torso and
arms. Kik is a popular platform that allows anonymous messaging. The platform
indicates that the account was created 3,610 days (nearly 10 years) ago and
provides no record of Platner’s activity, contacts or actions.
A spokesperson for Platner’s campaign confirmed the
account belongs to Platner, but said he deleted the app and hasn’t used the
account in years.
What is making Platner’s campaign a useful exercise in
illustrating the state of the public’s catastrophically poor ability to
accurately assess candidates is that we’re not being bamboozled by some
off-the-charts charismatic generational political talent. He’s just some guy.
He’s not a beloved longtime Democratic state legislator. He’s not a celebrated
war hero. He’s not some revered local good Samaritan. As our Jeff Blehar reminds us, his whole image of an oysterman
small businessman is a mirage.
From the good folks over at the Washington Free Beacon:
Together, Platner and Cushman
appear to lead what is more of a boutique hobby farm—whose main function is to
supply oysters to a restaurant owned by Platner’s mother—than a business that
pays the bills.
Platner, who receives roughly
$4,800 per month in VA disability benefits, did not take a salary from the
company last year, though his wife, a schoolteacher, did, according to his personal financial disclosure. The filing lists one entity
as paying Platner more than $5,000: the Ironbound Restaurant and Inn, a “casual
fine dining restaurant” and “old world luxury” hotel owned by Platner’s mother,
which is the primary purchaser of his oysters.
You might be wondering how a guy who is not getting paid
a salary can afford a house. It’s simple: “Platner received a $200,000 loan from his Ivy
League-educated father, a prominent attorney and Democratic donor.”
Nor is there much evidence Platner is interested in the
details of policy. To the extent he has an economic policy, it is “have the
federal government make businesses do what I want.” The Washington Post editorial
board — I write a column over there, but don’t weigh in on the house editorials
— ripped his proposed energy plan to shreds:
To start, [Platner] wants a
national freeze on electricity rates for four years. To encourage states to go
along with this, since they are responsible for regulating the price of power,
he’d offer federal financing to build energy infrastructure.
Artificially putting a ceiling on
what people pay will discourage the production of more energy without
discouraging its use. In other words, it’s a recipe for shortages.
To increase energy supply,
Platner wants to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel companies to build
“clean” technologies. And he would create a National Energy Infrastructure Fund
to issue loans that would be guaranteed by the federal government for energy
projects. There’s no reason to throw taxpayer money behind projects that can’t
compete for plentiful private capital on their own.
…He doesn’t just want to suspend
collection of the federal gas tax, which
is irresponsible enough, but get rid of it altogether.
To help offset the approximately
$40 billion a year in lost revenue for the Highway Trust Fund, Platner proposes
a windfall profits tax on oil companies. By that, he means a 50 percent
per-barrel tax on the difference between oil prices now and last year. Putting
road maintenance at the mercy of unpredictable oil prices: brilliant.
You know who else believed in price
controls and government direction of the energy industry, right?
Based on what we know, Graham Platner is just a
full-spectrum creep. That Democratic political firm that controls a bunch of social media
influencers generated amazing results.
But we should not expect Maine Democrats to abandon
Platner, nor pressure him to end his campaign. A whole lot of Democrats inside
and outside of Maine are now deeply emotionally invested in the success of this
campaign. From the moment they chose to believe that Platner had “accidentally”
gotten the symbol of the Nazi SS tattooed on his chest, and the “military
history buff” never recognized it as a Nazi symbol for 18 years, they were
taking their consciences and integrity and putting them into a lockbox and
entrusting them to Platner. Ending their support of Platner now would mean
admitting that his critics were right about him all along. And surely, no
modern Republican could relate to the phenomenon of sticking with a deeply
flawed candidate out of a sense of partisan obligation, and not wanting to let
the other side get a win.
I wonder how many Texas Republicans who intend to vote
for Ken Paxton are scoffing at Platner these days. (It’s not like Paxton can
spend a lot of time ripping into Platner for ugly marital infidelity.)
Democrats want control of the Senate, and they’re not
going to let little things like a youthful dalliance with neo-Nazism, horrific
statements on Reddit comment boards, or rampant infidelity get in the way of
stopping Susan Collins, who they now must insist is “one
of the most evil people in public life.” (Not merely in elected office, public
life. This would presumably include Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Hasan Piker, Alex Jones, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Harvey Weinstein, Bob Menendez, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Adam Gase.)
I would note that Susan Collins has never pulled a fire alarm to prevent a vote in Congress.
She’s never abandoned her constituent services after losing a primary.
She’s never stolen $5 million in disaster aid funds to finance her campaign,
and she’s never pressured a married staffer into having an affair that led to
the staffer killing herself by self-immolation.
But to justify overlooking Platner’s flaws, Collins has
to become one of history’s greatest monsters.
Over in the Free Press, River Page writes that no
one should be surprised that Platner is still competitive in this race, perhaps
even favored, despite all the scandals:
Platner’s willingness to support
bold ideas and run against the Democratic Party establishment, despite the
skeletons in his closet, makes him look like he’s interested in enacting
genuine political change. At the end of the day, this is all people really
want. And the fact that, despite his upbringing, he genuinely does seem like a
guy you could meet at a dive bar doesn’t hurt either.
A decade of Trump should have
taught the political and media establishment that voters, especially those in
the working class, could care less about personal scandal so long as their
genuine-seeming proposal for real political change is on the table. Platner is
going to teach them again, whether they like it or not.
Yes, and ignoring character, personal history, ethics,
and actual interest in the details of policy and governing has turned out
terribly for the country. Politicians with bad personal character — I’m
sure you have your own list, but consider Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo, Roy Moore, Matt Gaetz, and easily half of Americans would put our
current president in this category, too — have also turned out to be really bad
at governing. A lack of integrity creates many more problems than it solves.
You don’t get better results by hiring worse human
beings.
ADDENDUM: Speaking of Candace Owens, she’s in Moscow, on a “family vacation,” gushing about the city’s beauty. Yes, and I’m sure the planned “Germania” was going to be architecturally impressive, too. She really is like a rerun of Tucker Carlson’s show.
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