When BDN shines a light, policymakers act. Make a gift to help our reporters keep Maine’s leaders informed. Make a donation now.
An adviser to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner warned a former aide she would be accused of lying and sabotage if she cooperated with news outlets reporting on sexually explicit messages Platner sent to women, according to a message reviewed by the Bangor Daily News.
Morris Katz, a strategist with the Platner campaign, delivered the Friday warning through an intermediary to former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, who left the campaign last fall and spoke to The Wall Street Journal and New York Times. The outlets published stories in quick succession on Saturday about the messages that had been flagged by Platner’s wife at the outset of his campaign last summer.
“Just want to be clear on where we are right now,” Katz wrote in the message that McDonald shared exclusively with the BDN. “If the story goes in its current iteration we’ll communicate directly 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 Platner campaign has confirmed the existence of the messages. A campaign official told the Times that Platner had been communicating with up to six women, and that aides concluded when they learned of the matter that it was a private one the couple had addressed in counseling.
The new controversy comes as Platner glides toward a general election against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in a race Democrats see as critical to winning control of the Senate. He has become a progressive darling since rising from obscurity last summer to run a campaign whose strength forced Gov. Janet Mills to suspend her Senate primary bid in April.
The warning from Katz, who also advises New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, was relayed to McDonald through an adviser to Jordan Wood, a Democrat running in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. McDonald was working on Wood’s campaign until Saturday morning, when she said she quit to protect him from negative attention stemming from the Platner stories.
A Platner spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether it knew about Katz’s threat and agreed with its characterization. Wood issued a statement that did not answer questions about his campaign’s interactions with the Platner team but said problems in the Senate candidate’s marriage are the “private business” of Platner and his wife.
“Their commitment to helping the people of Maine is why Graham is our presumptive nominee and what makes me excited to partner with him to defeat Susan Collins and Paul LePage,” Wood said.
Katz responded to the Saturday stories on X, saying it is “no one’s f—— business what happened in Graham & Amy’s marriage before he was ever a candidate for office.”
“There should be no place in our politics for incompetent, opportunistic operatives who violate privacy, betray trust, and prioritize vengeance over decency,” he wrote in comments.
McDonald served as Platner’s political director from August through October, when she was one of three campaign officials to resign amid a turbulent stretch for the campaign. Her departure came after national and local news outlets reported on old Reddit posts in which Platner made racially charged remarks, downplayed sexual assault and used homophobic slurs, among other comments. Wood, a Senate candidate at the time, called on Platner to drop out.
In her resignation letter sent exclusively to the BDN, McDonald wrote that Platner’s past statements “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.” The campaign also offered McDonald $15,000 to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which she declined, according to Politico.
Around the same time, McDonald said Platner had told her roughly a month before her resignation that he had a tattoo “that could be problematic.” It depicted a Nazi-linked skull and crossbones symbol. Platner, who covered the tattoo, denied knowing it had a Nazi association and his campaign called McDonald’s account “a lie from a disgruntled former employee.”
Platner’s campaign built strength out of the October episode, with the candidate continuing to draw massive crowds even in rural corners of the state. Mills’ exit led Democrats in Maine and nationally to rally around him. He recently backed an allied slate of three gubernatorial candidates and led Collins by 9 points in a survey this week.
His campaign was roiled in the approach to Saturday, when The Wall Street Journal reported that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, had alerted the campaign aides last August to sexually explicit messages she had previously discovered on his phone in 2024, the year after they married.
That story did not name McDonald as one of the staffers approached, but the Times story did, also including details about the number of women involved and the circumstances under which Gertner informed the campaign. The stories came just 10 days before the June 9 primary in which Platner is expected to clinch the nomination to face Collins. Mills is still on the ballot alongside 2024 nominee David Costello, a longshot candidate.
The Platner campaign has made Gertner the face of its response, releasing a 5-minute video Saturday in which she said “no marriage is perfect” and noted she and Platner have worked on theirs in counseling.
“I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on, like health care, and education, and child care,” she said.
