Graham Platner, the man Democrats are banking on to unseat one of the Senate’s most durable Republicans, is fighting to keep his campaign alive amid a torrent of self-inflicted wounds — the latest involving boasts about drug use while drawing a military paycheck.
The Maine Democrat, a veteran and oyster farmer, entered the 2026 Senate race as a fresh-faced insurgent with real momentum.
His target: the Senate seat Republican Susan Collins has held since 1997. What followed his entry into the race has been anything but a clean campaign rollout.
Democrats need to gain four seats to reclaim the Senate majority, and doing so without flipping Maine carries enormous difficulty. That reality has kept the party tethered to Platner even as the headlines have grown steadily worse.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills, once considered the race’s most formidable Democratic contender, suspended her campaign ahead of the June 9 primary after polling showed Platner holding a commanding lead — though she noted her name would remain on the ballot.
That lead, however, now exists alongside a broadening scandal portfolio that grew again this week.
The Washington Free Beacon uncovered now-deleted Reddit posts in which Platner, writing under the handle “P-Hustle,” admitted to drug use while traveling through Europe on paid military leave just before departing the Marine Corps in 2008.
In his own words, posted to Reddit in 2020, Platner wrote: “I was making a pretty penny doing just about nothing. Went backpacking through Europe on the government dime, walked the Camino de Santiago, did some drugs and had a blast partying it up in hostels across the continent.” He signed off on the post with two words: “No regrets.”
The Free Beacon’s reporting also surfaced a separate Reddit exchange in which Platner weighed in on a thread about a Coast Guard seizure of 12,000 pounds of cocaine worth $312 million.
His response: “Street value. I always wonder what street you’re buying your cocaine on, because it’s not the street I’m buying my cocaine on.”
The drug disclosures landed in the middle of an already-erupting controversy over Platner’s personal conduct.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, whom he married in 2023, disclosed to a senior campaign aide last fall that her husband had sent sexually explicit messages to multiple other women.
Gertner surfaced the information during an opposition research vetting process last August.
A campaign official told the Journal the aide classified it as a private marital matter the couple was addressing through counseling. The campaign’s decision to sit on the information is now generating its own scrutiny.
Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former campaign political director, confirmed to CNN that Gertner did disclose the sexting to her and that the campaign assessed it as a potential political liability.
Platner fired back at the outlets that broke the story.
He called the Wall Street Journal and New York Times coverage “journalistic malpractice,” telling reporters: “The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times ran stories without any evidence besides the gossip from a former staffer…I’m sorry, that’s frankly journalistic malpractice.”
Compounding the story further, Platner was found to maintain an active profile on Kik, an anonymous messaging platform multiple child safety organizations have flagged for enabling child sexual abuse material.
The profile features a shirtless image of the candidate. He created the account in 2016.
Industry estimates place approximately 70% of Kik’s user base between the ages of 13 and 24. The Platner campaign told the Wall Street Journal the candidate had deleted the app from his phone but had not deactivated his account.
None of this represents Platner’s first brush with damaging disclosures.
He previously apologized for a separate set of deleted Reddit posts that surfaced shortly after he launched his campaign, and has acknowledged a tattoo on his chest that bears a resemblance to a Nazi symbol, which he says he received in 2007.
Platner has publicly addressed the controversies by pointing to personal growth, stating: “People can evolve and become different. I’m proud of the person I am today. I’m not proud of the person I always was. But I also don’t get to be who I am today without that journey.”
Party leaders are divided on how to respond. Sen. Cory Booker said on ABC’s “This Week” that he has “concerns” about Platner, adding: “That guy has questions to answer, and that’s what campaigns are for.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders took a notably different position, telling reporters: “I think it’s important for us to focus on the issues facing working families a little bit more than Graham Platner’s marriage.”
Collins, for her part, has continued pressing the offensive, attacking Platner’s Reddit history and branding him as too extreme for Maine voters. With the primary set for June 9 and the general election in November, the window for Democrats to pivot away from their embattled candidate has all but closed.
