Maine Democrats’ deeply-troubled U.S. Senate nominee-in-waiting, Graham Platner, is still considered the favorite in his bid to unseat moderate incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). Collins has defied the odds before, as we’ve noted previously, winning comfortably in 2020 even after every single public poll projected she’d lose. But this cycle is proving to be a challenging one for her, and for Republicans generally, so we’ll see how things unfold.
Platner’s latest attack has been that Collins voted to send him to war in Iraq, which elides the reality that Platner volunteered to go to Iraq well after Collins had already cast a vote in favor of that conflict (alongside two subsequent Democratic presidential nominees). Platner later re-enlisted and returned to the theater with the private military contractor Blackwater.
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He posted extensively online about his long-standing desire to go off and fight, writing that by being deployed, “we got what we wished for,” adding that he’d be “lying if I said it wasn’t something I enjoyed.” He’s now cynically pretending that Collins condemned him to that fate, for political reasons. When she mildly pointed out the relevant timeline, he quickly accused her of blaming the troops for her political judgment, a clumsy deflection.
If Platner was truly offended by people demeaning the troops, perhaps he wouldn’t do it himself. He’s under criticism for posting gleefully about a video depicting an American soldier getting shot multiple times by Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan, raving that the clip “never gets old,” and offering his assessment that the “dumb motherf***er” didn’t deserve to survive the attack. That heroic Purple Heart recipient has responded quite pointedly, and deservedly so, both in an op-ed and in on-air interviews.
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported that Platner’s wife had flagged to his campaign the existence of sexually explicit texts he has sent to numerous other women as potential fodder for the opposition.
“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,” the Wall Street Journal reported, noting that Platner’s wife, who married him in 2023, “told the campaign about messages she had found early in their marriage in the spring of 2025.”
More details: “Platner also has an active account on Kik, a popular, private messaging app. Platner’s profile shows a mirror selfie of him shirtless with a towel wrapped around his waist. Many of his tattoos are clearly visible in the picture. The Wall Street Journal verified the account on the app, a messaging platform that has been widely used for sexual encounters. The account is listed with the user ID phustle0331, which is similar to other social-media handles that Platner has used.” One tattoo that is obscured in the profile photo, perhaps not coincidentally, is his most infamous one: The emblem of a Nazi SS unit that operated death camps, about which Platner has lied.
The app in question has been described as a “predator’s paradise,” and was featured in a harrowing New York Times article about a murder. There is no available evidence that Platner used his profile for any illegal purposes, and his campaign insists the candidate forgot to deactivate a dormant account, though the sexual text messages, allegedly to roughly a dozen women, are undeniably recent. The campaign has disputed the number of women who have been reported, stating that it was closer to half a dozen. This is probably not the sort of attempted clarification Democratic operatives were eager to issue. Will any of these revelations hurt Platner? On one hand, none of this is helpful, especially since he’s featured his wife as part of his campaign, including commenting publicly about their fertility issues.
On the other hand, how many voters who’ve made peace with his Nazi tattoo and myriad additional pieces of extraordinary political baggage are going to abandon him over a sexting scandal? It’s possible that some Mainers are ultimately unbothered by his disturbing death camp ink and ugly online footprint, yet find the sordid stuff of sexual texts and hookup apps disqualifying, but I cannot imagine this is a substantial percentage of the electorate. Hardcore Platner supporters are not backing him for his character. That said, the intensifying drip, drip, drip may spook some persuadable voters, who may be evaluating a devolving portrait of a volatile and reckless candidate for high office. They may also wonder if there are more proverbial shoes left to drop. It’s a legitimate concern.
On that score, I’ll highlight a tweet from a New York Times podcaster, who reacted to the developing sexting controversy by observing that she’d “asked him if there was anything else he wanted to get ahead of and he said no.” In a CNN interview earlier this year, Platner similarly promised voters that the drama was over: “No, there’s not anything else coming,” he said when asked about additional skeletons that could be lurking. That claim has already imploded.
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And without getting into detail, rumors are rampant in D.C. that more serious, potentially related problems may be exposed in the coming weeks or months. Apparently alluding to these whispers, conservative writer Bethany Mandel responded to a video from Platner’s wife urging people to disregard the latest contretemps with a stark message: “Knowing what I know about Graham (and it’s a lot, for a long time now), my guess is she’s afraid of him. And he’s given her good reason.”
However this race goes in the end, the storms of controversy seem unlikely to clear anytime soon. Stay tuned.
