Ever since he launched his U.S. Senate bid last summer, Graham Platner has seemed to remain in the news almost on a daily basis.

That applied this past weekend, when The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that Platner’s wife had informed his campaign last August about sexually explicit texts with several women that she had discovered on her husband’s phone.

It was the latest in a string of controversies that Platner, 41, has faced and fended off while becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee to face Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in November — absent any massive shakeup during the June 9 primary.

Here’s a timeline of when the various unflattering disclosures involving Platner first came to light and how he and his campaign have responded to each one.

AUGUST 2025 — PLATNER JOINS THE RACE

Platner officially announced his Senate candidacy Aug. 19, 2025, after a campaign adviser reached out to several news outlets the day before to offer interviews with the not-so-well-known Democratic candidate.

It was clear from the start that Platner felt a bit buzzier than the other Senate candidates at that point, and the campaign launch brought coverage from not only Maine publications but also national outlets such as The New York Times. Platner’s ad team included Morris Katz and the Fight Agency, which had aided Zohran Mamdani’s rise to become mayor of New York City.

Most early stories touched on the oyster farmer and Marine veteran’s relative lack of political experience beyond serving as the town of Sullivan’s planning board chair and harbormaster. No past controversies or scandals came up in the launch stories.

SEPT. 1, 2025 — PLATNER JOINS BERNIE AT LABOR DAY RALLY

Platner’s campaign generated buzz in and out of Maine at dizzying speeds in its first few weeks. An early milestone was Platner appearing with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson inside a packed Cross Insurance Arena on Labor Day.

“We live in a system that has been built by the political class to enrich and support millionaires on the backs of working people,” Platner told the several thousand attendees. “Democrats are part of the same corporate apparatus that the Republicans are.”

OCT. 16, 2025 — PAST REDDIT POSTS COME TO LIGHT

The first big controversy to hit Platner came in mid-October, when CNN and Politico first published stories about a few of Platner’s nearly 2,000 posts on the social media site Reddit that he made between 2009 and 2021 under the handle, “P-Hustle.” In the deleted posts, Platner said rural Americans are “racist” and “stupid,” called all cops “bastards” and used the word “retard” several times.

He also responded to a 2013 post on Reddit titled, “What is one question you have always wanted to ask someone of another race,” by writing, “Why don’t black people tip?” (He had previously worked as a bartender at Tune Inn on Capitol Hill.) And he responded to a post about underwear designed to prevent sexual assault by saying people should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so (expletive) up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.”

He told the Press Herald many of his posts were “stupid joke comments” from a time when he felt lonely and isolated after leaving the military and a later job as a military contractor. Platner was deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan between serving in the Marines and Army, and after his last Afghanistan stint in 2018, he said he dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I’m proud that I got through a dark period in my life, and I’m proud of the life that I live now,” he said.

Two days before the first stories appeared on Platner’s old posts, Gov. Janet Mills formally announced her Senate bid as the prized Democratic recruit for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other national Democrats. The timing was viewed by many as hardly coincidental.

On Oct. 17, Platner’s political director, former state representative Genevieve McDonald, resigned from his campaign. She wrote in her resignation letter that the old posts “were not known to me when I agreed to join the campaign, and they are not words or values I can stand behind in a candidate.”

OCT. 20, 2025 — THE CONTROVERSIAL TATTOO

Only a few days passed before Platner faced a second controversy. During an extended interview on “Pod Save America”, Platner disclosed that he has a tattoo on his chest that resembles the Totenkopf, a symbol of Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, the unit that guarded Nazi concentration camps.

Platner said he and some fellow Marines got what they thought looked like a skull tattoo while drunk and on leave in Croatia in 2007 without knowing about its association with the Nazis.

“We got very inebriated, and we did what Marines on liberty do, and we decided to go get a tattoo,” Platner said. “We chose a terrifying looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are pretty standard military thing.”

Platner got the tattoo covered up on Oct. 21, the day after the podcast episode aired.

Platner said on the podcast that he made the disclosure because he heard political opponents were pitching stories about the tattoo to national reporters. He also said no one had told him it was a Nazi symbol until he decided to run for the Senate. The Army prohibits people with tattoos that are “extremist, racist, sexist or otherwise indecent” from serving. Platner noted that the tattoo was never an issue during his screening for the Army National Guard or when he was cleared to serve on a security detail for an ambassador to Afghanistan.

But McDonald, the former campaign staffer, publicly disputed Platner’s explanation.

“Platner prides himself on his extensive knowledge of military history,” McDonald said. “While he may not have known what his tattoo meant when he selected the image, it is not plausible he remained ignorant of its meaning all these years.”

Platner’s campaign responded by calling that “a lie from a disgruntled former employee.”

Another outlet, Jewish Insider, ran a story citing an anonymous source who claimed Platner told an acquaintance back in 2012 that he knew his tattoo was a Nazi symbol. CNN published a story on Oct. 24 about deleted online comments that indicated Platner may have been aware of the symbol’s meaning years ago. Platner disputed the reports.

FEB. 26, 2026 — ANOTHER DELETED SOCIAL MEDIA POST

Platner got through the initial string of controversies and enjoyed commanding leads over Mills in polls of the Senate contest while picking up endorsements and donations from people inside and outside of Maine. His message about economic populism was clearly getting through.

But another blip, albeit a briefer one, came in February and related once more to deleted social media comments. Platner’s campaign shared a post on X from Stew Peters, a far-right personality who has espoused antisemitic and white nationalist views online.

“War with Iran is the only thing Republicans and Democrats have both given a standing ovation for. Let that sink in,” Peters posted along with a video of President Donald Trump touting U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program during his State of the Union speech.

The Platner campaign shared the post with its own comment: “As always, there’s one thing that brings Republican and Democratic politicians together: sending other people’s children to die in stupid wars in the Middle East.”

 A Platner campaign spokesperson said the re-post was quickly taken down once the campaign realized the original post was from Peters.

APRIL AND MAY 2026 — CONSERVATIVES SEEK TO HIGHLIGHT OLD REDDIT POSTS

Platner’s conservative opponents started to point to ads and Fox News stories in April and May to bring up more of his old Reddit posts. They highlighted some of the deleted posts already mentioned in the fall and others that featured crude, sexual language related to portable toilets.

Pine Tree Results, a pro-Collins super PAC whose funders include out-of-state millionaires, launched a nearly $2 million ad buy in late April that hit Platner for the past Reddit posts.

They echo the attacks the Mills campaign had made against Platner, but the tactic didn’t work too well for the Democratic governor, as she suspended her campaign April 30.

MAY 30, 2026 — THE TEXTS WITH OTHER WOMEN

The latest controversy for Platner came over the weekend via stories from the Journal and the Times. They detailed how Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, had reached out to McDonald not long after Platner’s campaign launch in August and a few days before the Labor Day rally with Sanders.

Gertner told McDonald about sexually suggestive texts between Platner and other women that Gertner had previously discovered on Platner’s phone. Gertner reportedly made the disclosure to make sure they didn’t pose a risk to her husband’s nascent campaign. Gertner said she and Platner had been discussing the indiscretions in marriage counseling.

McDonald, who resigned from the campaign in October after the old Reddit posts first surfaced, said in social media posts that she had spoken off the record about the texts with the Wall Street Journal months ago. Journalists then contacted her again last week to share how they were running the story after verifying the messages through multiple sources.

The New York Times story cited McDonald by name, and said it had confirmed the past messages with “current and former campaign officials.”

McDonald also wrote in a Facebook post that Katz, the political strategist who helped Platner’s campaign get up and running, contacted her to demand that she “call the WSJ, retract my comments, tell them their reporting was inaccurate and send him a recording of the call.”

Gertner defended her husband in a written statement Saturday and blamed McDonald for violating her trust, saying she was “deeply hurt by her betrayal.”

Gertner also released a five-minute, straight-to-camera video in which she talked about the challenges she and her husband have faced since getting married in 2023, and how they are receiving counseling, both as a couple and individually.

“No marriage is perfect, and I don’t want a perfect marriage,” she said. “I want my marriage, and I want to be married to Graham.”

Platner bashed the national reports in a brief news conference with reporters on Sunday and said the Wall Street Journal and New York Times “ran stories without any evidence besides the gossip from a former staffer.”

But The New York Times cited a campaign official who acknowledged that Platner had in fact sent messages to up to six other women.

In a statement to the Press Herald, a Platner campaign official said Platner acknowledges the texts exist but that he’s frustrated with the “sensationalization” of the national coverage.