Embattled U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner is asking his staff to sign non-disclosure agreements.
That comes amid a flurry of shakeups in his campaign after a week marred by embarrassing revelations about his past online postings and a tattoo that resembles a well-known Nazi symbol.
Politico was the first to report on the existence of the non-disclosure agreements Thursday.
Platner’s former political director, Genevieve McDonald, told Politico that she was offered $15,000 to sign a non-disclosure agreement but refused to do so.
“I did not accept the offer. I certainly could have used the money. I quit my job to work on Platner’s campaign, believing it was something different than it is,” she said.
His campaign told Politico that the $15,000 offer was part of a standard severance.
This week a video of Platner surfaced showing him with a tattoo depicting a skull superimposed over crossbones, similar to the Totenkopf symbol adopted by the Nazi SS during World War II.
Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer from Sullivan, denies knowing that his tattoo was a Nazi symbol. He has said he got the tattoo in 2007 while deployed abroad with the U.S. Marines. While on leave, Platner and other Marines went to Croatia, where they got “very inebriated” and decided to get tattoos. He said that they all picked “terrifying” designs off the wall.
Platner has further denied allegations from McDonald, a former state representative who resigned last week from serving as his political director, that he knew the tattoo was problematic weeks ago. He told The Associated Press that he is getting the tattoo covered.
Before that, his campaign was contending with the fallout from numerous deleted Reddit posts in which Platner asked why Black people “don’t tip” and suggesting that women concerned about rape not drink around certain people, among others.
Then, on Wednesday, Platner confirmed to The Advocate that he was the author of a number of Reddit posts featuring homophobic slurs, anti-LGBTQ+ jokes and sexually explicit stories denigrating gay men.
He called the posts “indefensible,” according to The Advocate.
The non-disclosure agreements are among a series of moves over the past week to stabilize his campaign. Platner has hired his longtime friend Kevin Brown as his campaign manager. Brown has worked on the presidential campaigns of Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama, according to Politico.
He also has hired the firm Spruce Street Consulting, which Politico reports has connections to Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdami.
Non-disclosure agreements, common in the corporate world, are becoming a fixture as well in politics, according to a 2021 article published in New York University’s Journal of Legislation and Public Policy. That article noted that non-disclosure agreements have been used in presidential campaigns and heavily during President Donald Trump’s first term in office in a bid to stem the flow of information to the press.
Platner, who has support from unions and an endorsement from independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, made waves in August when he announced that he would challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in the 2026 November election. Sanders confirmed this week he is still supporting Platner.
Even before these recent revelations, he already faced an uphill battle against Collins, who plans to run for a historic sixth term next year. She has handily beaten back challengers, including in 2020 when she defied polls and expectations to eke out a fifth term in the Senate. Despite that, Collins, once ranked the country’s most bipartisan senator, has seen her popularity slump since Trump’s first term in the White House.
The oysterman also has to contend with a primary fight against Gov. Janet Mills, who launched her campaign last week with the support of national Democrats, and former End Citizens United Vice President Jordan Wood, who has called on Platner to drop out of the race.
