Graham Platner wants your vote. He also needs to be held accountable.

Mainers left with imperfect choice for Senate

One Senate seat in Maine could help determine whether Donald Trump operates with a check on his power for the next two years.

Susan Collins holds that seat. She has voted with Trump approximately 95% of the time in his second term, per CAP Action’s Trump Scorecard. She voted to confirm Pete Hegseth. She voted to confirm Kash Patel. She supported the procedural vote that advanced the One Big Beautiful Bill — the reconciliation package that cuts Medicaid and food assistance for millions of Americans. She is seeking a sixth term in a state Kamala Harris won by 7 points.

The Democrat running against her is Graham Platner. He is a 41-year-old Marine and Army combat veteran with four combat tours, a Bronze Star, a 100% VA disability rating, and an oyster farm on Frenchman Bay. He is endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ro Khanna. He supports Medicare for All, lifting the Social Security payroll tax cap, and the PRO Act.

He is also, by the available evidence, a man with serious problems.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both reported in late May 2026 that Platner sent sexually explicit messages to multiple women during his marriage to schoolteacher Amy Gertner, whom he married in 2023. His campaign confirmed it. The number of women involved ranges from six (the campaign’s figure) to as many as a dozen (per former political director Genevieve McDonald, who spoke to both outlets). Gertner discovered the messages in spring 2025 and alerted a campaign aide in August 2025 during internal opposition research.

Gertner has publicly defended him. In a video statement she called the coverage “shameful” and said “no marriage is perfect.” That is her right. It is also not the same thing as the behavior being acceptable.

After McDonald spoke to reporters, campaign strategist Morris Katz sent her a message — reviewed by the Bangor Daily News — warning that if the story ran, the campaign would say “on the record, and by name, that Genevieve violated the personal trust of Amy and Graham and shared explicit falsehoods to sabotage the campaign.” The campaign has characterized a $15,000 payment offered to McDonald as standard severance. McDonald says it came with a nondisclosure agreement she refused to sign.

That is not how you treat someone who worked for you. That is how you try to bury a story.

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On June 4, 2026, the New York Times published a separate piece based on interviews with 24 women who knew Platner. Six were former girlfriends. Three described toxic relationships — heavy drinking, infidelity, and behavior that was demeaning toward women. Lyndsey Fifield, a conservative operative who dated him from 2013 to 2015, told the Times he grabbed her by the shoulders hard enough to leave marks, yanked her from a cab by the wrist, and once twisted her arm behind her back and locked her in a room. She was explicit that he never hit her and it did not break her arm. She also said he referred to women as “hatchet wounds” and once said he would “rape” a home intruder “to show them that I’m dominant.”

Platner denies all of it. He has called the physical allegations “simply not true” and attributed them to someone “politically motivated.” Three other women, whose interviews were arranged by his campaign, described him as a caring partner.

To be precise: as of this writing, no woman has accused Graham Platner of sexual assault or sexual harassment on the record. That is a fact and it matters. What is on the record is a pattern of reported behavior toward women — confirmed extramarital sexting, a threatened campaign smear against a former staffer, and physical-intimidation allegations he denies — that would end most political careers and should at minimum end the notion that he gets our unconditional support.

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There is also the tattoo.

Platner has a chest tattoo resembling a Nazi SS Totenkopf. He covered it up in October 2025 and told the press he got it while drunk in Croatia as a young Marine and did not know its meaning until recently. Fifield told the Times she heard him refer to it as “my Totenkopf” when they were dating between 2013 and 2015 — years before his stated discovery of its meaning. One of those accounts is not accurate.

And in 2025, CNN and the Washington Post reported old Reddit posts in which Platner, posting as “P-Hustle,” minimized military sexual assault and victim-blamed survivors. A sexual-assault survivor confronted him about those posts at a town hall in Bucksport. He apologized in a five-minute video. His 2023 Kik profile, featuring a shirtless towel selfie, was still active when reporters found it.

He says he is a changed man. He says he is working on himself. He says his marriage is real and his commitment to public service is genuine.

Maybe all of that is true. We do not have to take his word for it.

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The Democratic Party response to all of this has been instructive.

Chuck Schumer met with Platner on June 2 and was asked five separate questions about him by reporters. He answered each one with the same sentence: “I met with Graham Platner today. We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.” When a reporter asked whether Governor Mills should re-enter the race, he said, “Any other subject you got?”

John Fetterman refused to back Platner and compared the situation to disgraced former congressman Eric Swalwell. Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna stayed in. Khanna headlined a Bar Harbor rally on June 5, called the behavior “wrong and toxic,” and cited redemption. Maggie Hassan called the allegations “serious” and deserving of “scrutiny” without calling for withdrawal. The Maine Democratic Party has not asked him to step down.

Nobody is stepping up because nobody wants to be the person who handed Susan Collins a sixth term.

That is the trap. And it is a real one.

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Maine is the linchpin of the Democratic path to a Senate majority. Democrats currently hold 47 seats. They need 51 to govern without a vice presidential tiebreaker. Maine is the only Republican-held seat in a state Harris won. It is rated a toss-up. Every serious analysis of the 2026 map says Democrats’ road to the majority runs through Maine.

Polling has Platner ahead by somewhere between 4 and 9 points, depending on the survey and when it was taken. Those numbers have tightened since the stories broke. They also come with a significant caveat: Maine pollsters underestimated Collins by roughly 8 to 10 points in 2020, when she trailed Democrat Sara Gideon in every poll and won by 9. This race is not won. It may not be winnable with Platner at the top.

But here is what is also true: the Democratic withdrawal deadline under Maine law is July 13, with a replacement due by July 27. Nobody is executing that option.

Platner is not dropping out. The primary is June 9.

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I am not asking anyone to love Graham Platner. I am not asking anyone to trust him. I am not asking anyone to set aside what has been reported or to pretend his behavior toward women was acceptable, because it was not.

I am asking people to think clearly about what the stakes are.

Susan Collins, with a sixth term and a Republican Senate majority, provides no meaningful check on this administration. She has demonstrated that with her voting record. A Democratic Senate with 51 seats — even a messy one, even one that includes an oyster farmer from Maine who sent explicit texts to a dozen women and has a covered-up tattoo and a contested account of his past — is a fundamentally different governing environment than the one we have now.

We do not get to choose between a perfect candidate and Susan Collins. We get to choose between Graham Platner and Susan Collins.

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But here is what I want Platner to understand, if this reaches him or anyone around him.

We are not devotees. We are citizens. The moment you take office, you are accountable to us — not the other way around. You do not get our silence on your behavior in exchange for a Senate vote. You get our vote in exchange for a commitment to govern in our interests, and you keep it by doing exactly that, and you lose it the moment you betray it.

You say you are a changed man. We will hold you to that.

Every vote you cast will be public. Every position you take will be on the record. Every time you choose the donor over the constituent, the powerful over the vulnerable, the comfortable answer over the honest one, we will say so. Loudly and by name.

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We cannot treat politics like religion. Devotion to a candidate is not a civic value. It is how we end up defending behavior we would never accept in our own lives, from people who have no particular reason to earn it.

The only thing worth being devoted to is accountability itself. The demand that the people we send to Washington answer to us, govern for us, and when they fail — as they will, because they are human — that we say so without flinching.

Platner is not owed our silence nor our devotion. Maine voters are not owed a perfect choice. What we are owed is a government that answers to the people it serves.

If we are going to place our faith somewhere, let it be there.

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The Dad Briefs covers the civic, political, and quietly human stories that shape family life in America. Be kind, feed your mind, and wash your behind.