Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner created suggestive profile on hookup app KiK
by Susan Ferrechio · The Washington TimesMaine Senate candidate Graham Platner created a sexually suggestive profile on the hookup app KiK and used the app in his 30s.
KiK is an anonymous messaging app used largely by teens and young adults. Mr. Platner’s profile on the app features a photo of himself shirtless with a towel wrapped around his waist.
The account uses the name Graham Platner and the handle associated with his Reddit and Instagram posts, “Phustle,” and “Phustle0331.” His distinctive tattoos can be seen in the photos, including the Chinese character for “love” on his chest.
The profile was created in June 2016, when Mr. Platner was about 31 years old. He is 41 now.
The revelation about the KiK account comes after Amy Platner recorded a video defending her husband and expressing anger at media reports that exposed he was sexting with several women.
Ms. Platner alerted her husband’s campaign staffers about the sexually explicit texts in the days before the Democrat announced his Senate bid, when the party was scanning his past for any dirt political opponents might find.
She said she felt “betrayed” by the campaign staffer who leaked the texts.
“If anybody knows me and Graham personally, you know that we got married in 2023. We live in Sullivan, we’ve got two dogs, and we love each other deeply, so it makes me really angry, disappointed, and 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 is running on like healthcare and education and child care,” Ms. Platner says in the video, posted Saturday.
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The Platner campaign has been dealing with a cascade of revelations related to Mr. Platner’s online footprint, some of it dating back several years, as he battles to flip the U.S. Senate seat held for decades by Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins.
Mr. Platner previously faced backlash for a series of posts on his now-deleted Reddit account that include topics such as sexual assault and military veterans.
In 2013, he posted on Reddit: “How about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f——- up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?”
He later mocked a Purple Heart recipient, calling the wounded soldier a “dumb motherf——-” who “didn’t deserve to live.”
Meanwhile, he deemed all police officers “bastards,” agreed with posts calling White, rural Mainers “racist and stupid,” and asked, “Why don’t Black people tip?”
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Mr. Platner has apologized for the remarks, blaming the “stupid joke comments” on mental health struggles, isolation and the violent culture he experienced after returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Saturday’s video defending her husband, Ms. Platner said they are attending marriage counseling and getting individual counseling.
“Being married is hard; being newly married is hard; being newly married and going through infertility is hard,” she said. “Being newly married going through infertility and a Senate campaign is hard. I don’t even know if I have the right words to describe what we’ve been going through.”
Ms. Platner described being betrayed by a former campaign aide to whom “I confided deeply personal details about my marriage” and who “spread malicious gossip to anyone who would take her call.”
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Mr. Platner is a military veteran receiving full disability benefits and an oyster farmer in the tiny coastal community of Sullivan in northeastern Maine. He was leading Ms. Collins by 9 percentage points in a University of New Hampshire poll taken at the end of May.
The Washington Times reached out to the Platner campaign.
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Susan Ferrechio
sferrechio@washingtontimes.com
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