Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) suggested she could restart her Maine Senate campaign after suspending it in April against Democrat Graham Platner as the embattled progressive insurgent faces fallout from his latest scandal involving sexts to women who were not his wife.
“People have the impression that I ‘withdrew’ or ‘dropped out,’” Mills told the Portland Press Herald. “But I simply suspended active campaigning. I am still on the ballot.”
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the Mills campaign for additional comment.
Platner will travel to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Senate Democrats and fundraise, according to Axios, as he manages the political fallout from the latest scandal that threatens to weigh him down in the battleground general election against centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).
Platner and his wife, Amy Gertner, confirmed over the weekend that Graham exchanged sexually explicit texts with women other than Gertner since they got married in 2023. It was also uncovered over the weekend that he has a profile on the Kik messaging app, which the campaign described as inactive and no longer installed on Platner’s phone.
Platner accused media outlets of having “run gossip instead of wanting to talk about the things that actually matter in this race, which are the material realities that Mainers are working with.”
GRAHAM PLATNER’S WIFE RAISED SEXUALLY EXPLICIT TEXTS TO A SENATE CAMPAIGN AIDE
Platner has also faced criticism for since-deleted offensive social media posts and a tattoo resembling a Totenkopf Nazi symbol, which he’s since had covered by another tattoo.
Despite Mills’s remarks, Platner remains the presumptive Democratic nominee for the June 9 primary. Prior to suspending her campaign, Mills was lagging in some polling by double digits but had closed that gap to 9 points in a recent University of New Hampshire survey conducted in the weeks since pausing her candidacy.