Graham Platner is shaking up his marketing campaign amid a swirl of controversy, bringing in a longtime buddy to operate as his Maine Senate marketing campaign’s new supervisor, hiring a compliance agency and sending non-disclosure agreements to staffers.
Kevin Brown — who grew to become the marketing campaign supervisor this week and whose previous marketing campaign work contains the presidential bids of Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama, although he has not labored in Maine — is just one of many adjustments. The marketing campaign has additionally introduced on an in-house lawyer, in addition to compliance agency Spruce Avenue Consulting, which has ties to a constellation of buzzy progressives together with Zohran Mamdani.
Amid fallout from Platner’s controversial years-old social media posts, his marketing campaign started sending non-disclosure agreements to staffers final week, in keeping with his former high political director, Genevieve McDonald, who mentioned she declined to signal one.
“The campaign offered me $15,000 to sign a NDA,” McDonald informed POLITICO in an interview. “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.”
A press release from the marketing campaign referred to the $15,000 supply as customary severance. A Platner marketing campaign spokesperson mentioned the crew not too long ago employed Spruce Avenue “to take over campaign compliance to institute standard practices that had yet to be put into place. Some of those standards had to be instituted retroactively but as a matter of course we do not require anyone previously involved in the campaign to do so. Genevieve McDonald was offered severance which is standard for all campaign employees and contractors.”
The strikes to salvage a marketing campaign months after its launch underscore how briskly Platner took off and the way imperiled he finds himself, in a vital state for Democrats of their uphill quest to retake the Senate. Platner burst onto the scene with viral movies as a type of progressive warrior poet, campaigning for Mainers’ “freedom to live a life of dignity and joy.” However his promising bid has been beset by unfavourable tales about his previous during the last week, shortly after Gov. Janet Mills, favored by nationwide Democrats to tackle Sen. Susan Collins, entered the first.
Revelations of the staffing adjustments and non-disclosure agreements — which haven’t been beforehand reported — come as Platner’s marketing campaign is in harm management. On Wednesday, the candidate confirmed to The Advocatethat his Reddit posts included “homophobic slurs, anti-LGBTQ+ jokes, and sexually explicit stories denigrating gay men.”
That follows Platner expressing remorse over getting a Nazi image tattooed on his chest 20 years in the past, together with beforehand unearthed offensive Reddit posts, together with one from 2013 downplaying sexual assault within the navy and one other since-deleted 2018 one suggesting violence is important to enact social change. Platner has apologized for the posts and mentioned they don’t symbolize his progress in recent times.
Brown, the brand new marketing campaign supervisor, declined to touch upon the report.
The non-disclosure settlement first circulated among the many Senate Democratic hopeful’s marketing campaign within the hours after he got here beneath hearth for these Reddit posts final week.
The paperwork — despatched electronically by a marketing campaign contractor Sunday to McDonald, who resigned two days earlier — was voided by the marketing campaign at 7:04 p.m. Wednesday, a number of days after she had already resigned and hours after POLITICO requested remark from the marketing campaign on its use of NDAs.
The NDA — titled “Graham for Maine NDA.pdf” — was despatched by Victoria Perrone, a political compliance knowledgeable and Spruce Avenue’s president and founder. Peronne, reached by cellphone, confirmed Platner was a shopper however wouldn’t remark additional.
McDonald mentioned she understood the monetary supply to be conditional on her signing the NDA. She offered a screenshot of a textual content message from Perrone suggesting Monday that if McDonald might “get it back to me before the end of the day, I can get your payments out the door.”
McDonald mentioned that Daniel Moraff, who was a marketing consultant on Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn’s 2024 marketing campaign, functioned because the de facto marketing campaign supervisor previous to Brown’s arrival this week. In a quick cellphone name, Moraff mentioned he was by no means formally Platner’s marketing campaign supervisor.
McDonald resigned final week, citing Platner’s previous posts.
“Either they didn’t thoroughly vet him or they didn’t think the things they found would be a problem,” McDonald mentioned in an interview. “Either way, that was a poor calculus. You cannot say things like rural Mainers are ‘racist’ and ‘stupid’ or you’re a radicalized communist at 37, play them off as ‘you were a young man’ and remain a serious contender against Susan Collins. This was four years ago.”
It stays unclear whether or not the controversy surrounding Platner’s previous will current a long-term drag on his marketing campaign on this anything-goes period of politics for each events.
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