U.S. Senate hopeful Graham Platner today denied some of the allegations made by former girlfriends in a New York Times story this week, including one charge that he engaged in physically threatening behavior.
"No, that's just not true," Platner said, speaking with Maine Public's Steve Mistler in Hancock this morning about the allegations and whether he fears they may impede the momentum of his campaign.
The latest allegations come from Lindsay Fifield, a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups in Republican campaigns. Fifield also asserted that Platner knew long ago that his controversial tattoo was associated with Nazi iconography, a claim that first surfaced in the publication Jewish Insider last fall. Platner says that's not true.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
PLATNER: No, and also it's important to remember she's the original source of that story.
MISTLER: The Jewish Insider story.
PLATNER: Yeah. So like we're just talking about the exact same thing, you know? I had that tattoo for 17 years, I got that tattoo with other Marines who have also been happy to talk about it. I reenlisted in the United States Army. I was screened for gang and hate tattoos. I got a top secret security clearance to work for the State Department on the ambassador security detail in Afghanistan. I was screened for gang and hate tattoos. I took my shirt off multiple times for 17 years, including as the campaign shared, a video of me dancing shirtless in front of my extended family at my brother's wedding to his wife, who is Jewish, and her Jewish family, who had come to the wedding. So I would say all of the evidence points to the fact that I didn't know I had a skull and crossbones. That's what I had. And the moment I found out it had these connotations, it was covered up within three days. The reason that this story even exists is because of this one single person.
MISTLER: This relationship occurred. How old are you? Late 20s, roughly?
PLATNER: Yeah, late 20s, early 30s, I think.
MISTLER: This is when you were in D.C.?
PLATNER: Yeah, and I think it's also important — we never dated. This is someone I had a casual relationship with. I was single at the time.
MISTLER: What kind of contact have you had with Lindsay? When did that stop?
PLATNER: Last contact we ever had is she, last fall, texted me to ask, 'I just bought several hundred oysters for an upcoming party, and what's the best way for me to store them?' And I told her, because you know, I do know how to store oysters.
Platner has navigated other controversies by talking about them in the media and at his nearly 80 town halls. What's emerged is a redemption story about a combat vet who went through a dark period after returning home, sought therapy through the VA, and slowly rebuilt his life in Sullivan. But last week, a new story broke that he sexted with several women early in his marriage, and it threatened to puncture his redemption narrative.
Platner: For Amy and I both, it's a unique experience to have a whole bunch of people care about the details of our marriage. And I'll just be upfront, our marriage is our marriage, and this kind of story is about something that happened early in our marriage that we dealt with. I was accountable to my wife, I was vulnerable and open and incredibly honest with Amy, and she in turn gave me a ton of love and compassion, and that allowed us to build a much, frankly, stronger marriage. And then years later, you know, here we find ourselves getting into the campaign, and Amy goes and confides in someone on the campaign staff about details of our personal life. We were doing it because we thought we should, we thought we should, like, be very upfront about everything that's happened — and this is before the campaign, this is early in our marriage — and then that person goes and betrays Amy's trust and turns like details of her marriage that we had already, like, dealt with and moved through into a media spectacle. And it's, you know, that's painful.
MISTLER: I just kind of wonder, I know you were expecting a tough campaign. Did you expect this?
PLATNER: I mean, I wouldn't say I expected this, like in detail, but I expected some version of — I mean, when Amy and I decided we were going to do this, we knew that our lives were gonna get ripped apart. We knew that people were gonna lie. We knew that people were gonna make things up. We knew that the machine itself, like the media — no offense — but like this larger media apparatus, the whole political pundit class combined with like the political establishment itself was going to fight us tooth and nail, because what we are building here is something substantial. What we are building here in the state of Maine is an actual political movement to retake American politics, to take it back from the moneyed interests from the economic royalists, from the oligarchy, the billionaires. And they own everything, and they're going to fight us tooth and nail, and we knew that they were going to — there was no bar that is too low for them to stoop to to fight back against something like this. And the thing is, is that we also know that we can take it. We know that our, we, like, our love for each other, our marriage is, there's nothing these people can do to try to like destroy Amy and I's marriage. I think what this, the system doesn't understand is that we're committed to a better future. We're committed to breaking the power of this political establishment that does not represent the average person.
MISTLER: I think a part of the appeal of your movement is that you've been able to communicate very clearly to people about what you want to do, like what the problem you've diagnosed, these problems and income inequality struggles of working-class Mainers — and I wonder, though, about the cumulative effects of these revelations about your personal life.
PLATNER: Yeah, I don't think, I don't think it's going to do anything serious. And I think, and the reason is, is that the whole point of these stories is to make sure we're not talking about healthcare, it's to make sure we're not talking about raising taxes on the rich, it's to make sure we're not talking about getting money out of politics. That's the purpose. The people that we are against, the system that we are against, whether it's Susan Collins in this race or if we're talking about like the actual larger political system itself and a media system that surrounds it, and in many ways protects it. The last thing anybody wants to talk about are the actual material struggles of regular people in this country, and the policy that we need to change to end those struggles. Nobody wants to talk about that. And so the more that they talk about me shows just how little they want to talk about the actual challenges the American people are facing. And I just don't think it's going to work. And I very firmly believe that if I go out and continue to engage with people and continue to talk about the reality that Mainers are living in, the struggles of regular everyday people, that's why we're going to win this thing.
Despite the unflattering stories, Platner said nobody in the Maine Democratic Party or the national party had asked him to drop out of the race. He said the movement he's building isn't for those who think he should.
