Several women who used to date Senate candidate Graham Platner told The New York Times this week that reports of the Maine Democrat’s past offensive posts online and of cheating on his now-wife echo volatile behavior they said they experienced while romantically involved with him.
The Times spoke with more than two dozen people for the Thursday story, including six women who said they had dated Platner. Of those women, three who were with him for years described “unsettling behavior” that sometimes included demeaning women, cheating, drinking heavily and in one case being physically threatening.
The first woman, a Virginia conservative, described him as abusive and “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions.” The second woman, a Maine liberal, said she “recognized a version of him that I had experiences with” when seeing his old posts. A third woman, another Maine Democrat, said she felt like “collateral damage to the world that is his.”
Platner, a combat veteran, told HuffPost that he was in “a dark place” when he dated those women and that he “was a far from perfect boyfriend.”
“I take responsibility for all of that, and wish I had been better. Any characterization beyond that is false, and I believe, politically motivated,” he said in a statement. “I’m not proud of who I was then, but I am proud of the work I’ve done since, and the movement we are building in Maine.”
Platner has already been plagued by scandal since launching his campaign as a populist oyster farmer to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins, a major race that Democrats need to win to take back control of the upper chamber.
The candidate, who served in the Marines, the U.S. Army, and as a military contractor for Blackwater, found himself in hot water for past social media posts objectifying women and dismissing sexual assault. He has since apologized, saying he was struggling at the time with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after leaving the military.
“I was like, this makes sense,” Jenny Racicot, who dated him off and on from 2019 to 2021 in Maine, told the Times of the posts. “This person does not respect women.”
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Both the Times and The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Amy Gertner, whom Platner married in 2023, tried to warn his campaign of potentially damning information at the beginning of his candidacy: that her husband sent sexually explicit messages to multiple other women.
After the reports, Gertner posted a video defending her husband and said the two are in a better place now, thanks to counseling. Platner also acknowledged that the couple had previously been struggling in their marriage.
Platner also faced controversy over a skull and crossbones tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol he got on his chest while serving abroad in the Marines. The candidate said he had been unaware it was a Nazi symbol and immediately got it covered up, though one of the women who spoke to the Times this week disputed that claim.
“I would never have known what that was. He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo,” Lyndsey Fifield, who dated Platner from 2013 to 2015 in Washington, said of the Totenkopf.
She also told the paper he would sometimes be physically rough with her — but that he never injured her — something Platner “strongly disputes.” He would also repeatedly say he’d rape anyone who broke into the home to show dominance, she claimed, which the Times said the campaign didn’t dispute.
The campaign told HuffPost that Fifield is “a lifelong GOP operative who’s dedicated her career to electing Republicans.” While Fifield has worked for many Republican candidates, she said she has no connection to Collins’ campaign.
“I know it looks like a bitter ex-girlfriend Republican trying to take down a Democrat — it has nothing to do with that,” she told the Times. “If he was running as a Republican, I would be doing this exact same thing.”
Platner has managed to maintain his strong support so far, including from major progressives like Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), though Maine Gov. Janet Mills has made it clear she is still on the ballot for the June 9 Democratic primary. Also, many other ex-girlfriends are still friends with Platner and have come out in public support of his campaign.
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