This lobster boat captain from Down East quit Platner’s campaign, but hasn’t left it behind
The moment a random oyster farmer from Down East Maine named Graham Platner announced a run for the US Senate last August, a well-known woman in local politics joined the campaign to give it local credibility and heft.
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Since then, Genevieve McDonald — a former state legislator, lobbyist, and trailblazing lobsterman turned political operative — has become a catalytic character in the dramatic story of Platner’s candidacy.
Just not, perhaps, in the way the candidate and his team may have expected.
When the first wave of negative headlines dropped for Platner last October, which revealed his offensive online posts and his Nazi symbol tattoo, McDonaldpublicly quit the campaign. Not only that, she refused a nondisclosure agreement deal so she could speak candidly about her experience.
“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,” McDonald told Politico at the time.
As Platner improbably went on to box out his primary rival, Governor Janet Mills, McDonald continued to air her misgivings with his campaign. On May 30, explosive stories dropped in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times alleging the newly married Platner had, as of last year, been exchanging explicit texts with as many as a dozen women.
The named source on the Times’ piece: McDonald.Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, had spoken to McDonald about the sexting revelations shortly after the campaign began last August, to flag them as a potential liability; McDonald later confirmed the account to the paper.
On social media, McDonald alleged Platner’s team threatened her as the sexting stories percolated, which she said prompted her to go on the record.
In a Facebook post lateron May 30, McDonald said, “I didn’t wake up this morning and think, “you know what, my life is pretty good and peaceful, I should burn it down.”
In response, his campaign turned its focus to attacking McDonald as a “malicious gossip.” In a statement, Gertner said she trusted McDonald “with the most private chapter of our lives. … I am deeply hurt by her betrayal and the invasion of our privacy.”
Within hourson Saturday, news broke that she’d parted ways with the campaign of Democrat Jordan Wood for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, where she had been working since leavingPlatner.
High-profile Democratic operatives rebuked McDonald for crossing a line by sharing confidential information — one many claimed would be enough to torch her career.
But in the extremely small world of Maine politics, McDonald is a well-known entity. Among former colleagues and fellow Democrats, her actions only added to painful intraparty divisions that had been exposed by the bruising fight between Platner and Mills.
“Genevieve decided this was too messy a campaign for her to be part of so she left,” wrote state Representative Valli Geiger, a Platner supporter, on Facebook. “But she didn’t just leave as a professional would, she left trashing the candidate to the press, to friends, on Facebook and other social media.”
But McDonald still has defenders among Maine Democrats skeptical of Platner’s rise and the allegedly heavy hand the campaign has wielded in defense.
State Representative Cassie Julia posted to Facebook that she understood why McDonald did what she did: “Maine girlies just don’t put up with that kind of [expletive],” she said.
Speaking to the Globe, Julia called McDonald a “rock-solid human.”
“I trust whatever judgment calls she made in this process, and she must’ve had very good reasons for doing what she’s done,” she added. (Julia said she plans to vote for Mills in the primary, even though the governor has suspended her campaign.)
McDonald declined to speak to the Globe.
A number of Maine Democrats contacted by the Globe did not wish to speak on the record about McDonald. The Platner campaign did not provide comment.
Both McDonald’s and Platner’s roots run deep in Hancock County, Maine,a part of Down East that includes Acadia National Park; their paths crossed years before he ran for Senate, given the small worlds of Maine politics and the aquaculture industry.
McDonald grew up on Mount Desert Island across Frenchman Bay from Platner’s hometown of Sullivan, with its views of Cadillac, Dorr, and Champlain mountains. The choppy waters between them, where Platner’s oyster farm is located, helped create a mythic political backstory to his campaign.
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It is also the same waters where Platner became the face of the successful opposition to a massive salmon farm by a Norwegian firm that got him noticed by consultants, who approached him to run for Senate.
But years before that, McDonald herself was establishing a political career. After attending the University of Maine, she married and eventually settled in Stonington, on a different island near where she grew up. There she became a lobsterman and the first woman appointed to the Maine Department of Marine Resources Lobster Advisory Council, representing Down East.
She sailed into office by winning an open state House seat in 2018. In 2022, she ran for the state Senate, but later dropped out and, at the same time, resigned from the state House. Shortly after that she joined a prominent lobbying firm, which represents a number of corporate clients.
But her departure from the firm last year to work for the populist upstart Platner puzzled some Maine political insiders, both within the labor movement and the business community, given the nature of that lobbying work seemed to conflict with his left-wing politics.
As Platner’s political director, McDonald tapped her connections in the state capital to help introduce the first-time candidate to lawmakers. She was a distinctly locally rooted presence on an early Platner launch team managed in part by national progressive consultants based in New York and Washington.
Two months after Platner entered the race, stories started appearing in multiple news outlets that revealed his history of offensive comments on Reddit — rocking what had been a rapid political rise.
By Oct. 17, McDonald quit the campaign, marking its first high-profile departure, and provided her resignation letter to the Bangor Daily News. She wrote that Platner’s past comments “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.”
”While I am empathetic to Graham’s experiences and respect his personal journey and growth, I cannot overlook the volume and nature of his past comments, many of which were made as an adult, not as a young man,” she said.
McDonald later told Politico that Platner’s campaign offered her $15,000 to sign a nondisclosure agreement — which typically entails a commitment to not disparage a former employer —but she declined. (Platner’s team said at the time such offers were standard practice.)
After that, scrutiny continued to mount on Platner, but Maine Democrats kept flocking to his campaign. McDonald left the campaign just as it improbably became something of a statewide and national phenomenon.
Now, the Platner campaign is facing its toughest stretch since the period when McDonald resigned.
On Thursday, the Timesfollowed up with a fresh report that several of Platner’sex-girlfriends alleged disturbing behavior, including an incident in which he grabbed one and shoved her into a bedroom before blocking the door, so she could not leave.
Additionally, that girlfriend stated Platner knew years ago that his chest tattoo was a Nazi symbol — and in fact knew it was when he got it — contradicting his claims he never knew its significance.
The stories are only adding to growing Democratic uneasiness about Platner’s viability in what is expected to be a tough contest against incumbent GOP Senator Susan Collins.
Since last weekend, some Democrats were even running through scenarios on how to replace Platner should he drop out. Notably, Mills told the Portland Press-Herald that she only suspended her campaign because she ran out of money — and that her name is still on primary ballots.
Platner, for his part, told MS Now’s Chris Hayes on Thursday night he was staying in the race and was not facing pressure from party leaders to reconsider.
Meanwhile, some of Platner’s supporters continue to issue online attacks toward McDonald. She has not spoken to the news media about the Times reporting but posted on Facebook, “I believe women.”
For Julia, the state representative, the whole situation is disorienting.
“A lot of people’s reaction to Platner is very interesting and notably in the fervor, and surety, that they have about his character,” she said. That there are“some people who’ve known [McDonald] for longer than they’ve known Platner, speaking in ways that put more weight behind their faith in him than their faith in her, is confusing to me.”
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