Speaking with reporters after a meeting with Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sidestepped questions about controversies in the political newcomer’s campaign, repeating a scripted and ambiguous message of resolve.
“I met with Graham Platner today. We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate,” the New York Democrat said when asked about Platner’s controversies, the latest of which emerged over the weekend when it came to light that in 2024 the then-recently married oyster farmer from Sullivan had sent sexually explicit text messages to six other women.
Schumer delivered that message five times in less than 60 seconds. He offered no details of the meeting, one of multiple with Democratic lawmakers Platner has planned along with a fundraiser Tuesday. A Democratic source familiar with the Platner-Schumer meeting told the Bangor Daily News it was productive but did not elaborate.
Schumer repeated his remarks when pressed more than once on whether Gov. Janet Mills — whom he initially recruited to run against the five-term Collins but lagged in polls and fundraising — should revive the campaign she suspended in late April: “Any other subject you got?” the senator snapped.
The meetings with senators come after The Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported that Platner had sexted multiple women a few years ago.
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The latest controversy followed several that arose in the fall, including a Nazi-linked tattoo Platner has since covered, and offensive social media comments about women, Black people and rural Mainers. The sexting reports heightened concerns among Democrats in Maine and nationwide, as Platner is the presumptive nominee and the state is a must-win for the party’s hopes of flipping the Senate.
Several supporters, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, have come to Platner’s defense, and some Democratic senators have sidestepped questions on his past to focus on the candidate’s push for a working-class movement.
“He is campaigning on health care costs, food costs, gasoline costs, on the impact that [President Donald] Trump economic policies are having upon the lives of people who live in Maine,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, told MSNOW Tuesday morning. “That is the issue which … Maine voters are going to want to have the focus on for the rest of this year.”
Sanders, whose office did not respond to a request for comment, told reporters Tuesday that he was still backing Platner.
“He’s running an extraordinarily strong campaign in Maine,” Sanders said outside the U.S. Capitol. “He’s talking about the needs of working families. The big money interests have already pledged to spend some $90 million in super PACs to try to defeat him, why is that?”
Republicans have increasingly jumped at every revelation to blast Platner as unfit for office.
“Graham Platner is morally bankrupt and attempts by Democrat leadership to rescue his candidacy show just how far they will go to advance their far-left agenda,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Kristen Cianci said in a statement Tuesday. “If Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other Democrats leaders still haven’t found their red line with Platner, they never will.”
Outside Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters in Washington, where meetings between Platner and some senators were reportedly taking place, a small crowd of protesters chanted that Platner was “a creep.” At least two were shirtless and wore a towel in reference to the profile photo on Platner’s active account on the private messaging platform Kik, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, had alerted campaign aides in August about the explicit messages. The couple, which has since gone to counseling, says they’ve been betrayed by a staffer divulging private matters, and they criticized the outlets’ reporting. But a campaign official told the Times Platner had been communicating with up to six women.
“People don’t care about gossip or headlines, they care that you’re fighting for their hospitals, their paycheck, their kids,” Platner said this past weekend.
Several senators’ offices did not respond to messages seeking comment on the meetings with Platner, including Schumer and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who endorsed Platner while Mills was criticizing the Sullivan oyster farmer over past statements on sexual assault.
After the news of Platner’s text messages broke, Mills told a Portland Press Herald columnist that she is “still on the ballot.” That was always going to be the case because she suspended her campaign too close to the June 9 primary to be left off the ballot, but Mills’ recent comments suggested that she was always keeping the door open.
“People have the impression that I ‘withdrew’ or ‘dropped out,’” Mills said, “but I simply suspended active campaigning.”
