WASHINGTON — Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) led the #Metoo effort that took down former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and tried to tank Supreme Court docket justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s affirmation — as a self-styled champion of zero-tolerance feminism.
However as head of the Democratic Senatorial Marketing campaign Committee, the New York Democrat has refused to disavow embattled Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, even after bombshell New York Occasions allegations from ex-girlfriends that he despised ladies and at instances bodily manhandled them.
“We’re nonetheless going to win Maine,” Gillibrand instructed CNN’s chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju after the most recent New York Occasions story interviewing his former girlfriends broke Thursday.
A supply near the DSCC instructed The Put up that the primary marketing campaign arm for Senate Democrats is now reconsidering spending closely on adverts in Platner’s race to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) because of the sexual misconduct revelations.
Platner’s spouse, Amy Gertner, revealed to a marketing campaign aide final August that her husband had been sexting on his cellphone with no less than six ladies exterior their marriage, forcing the couple to hunt marriage counseling, The Occasions and Wall Road Journal reported.
And the candidate had maintained an lively account — with an image of himself stripped to the waist and carrying solely a white towel — on the non-public messaging app Kik, which has been accused of being a hotbed for adultery, informal hook-ups and sexual predation.
That’s on prime of latest particulars gleaned within the Occasions from ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield a couple of tattoo on the candidate’s chest that he had beforehand denied realizing was a Nazi image — regardless of referring to it as such in conversations together with her greater than a decade in the past.
Gillibrand struck a distinct tone following accusations of sexual misconduct that ultimately drove Franken from workplace in December 2017.
“I don’t really feel that he ought to proceed to serve,” Gillibrand stated in a press convention that very same month.
“Sufficient is sufficient. I imply, it is a dialog we’ve been having for a really very long time and it’s a dialog that this nation must have,” she added. “We, as elected leaders, ought to completely be held to a better commonplace.”
Two years later, she defended her resolution in a New Yorker interview that “the ladies who got here ahead felt it was sexual harassment. … So it was.”
“Among the allegations towards me usually are not true. Others I keep in mind very in a different way,” Franken had stated in his resignation speech.
Gillibrand had additionally claimed Senate Republicans “don’t consider ladies” throughout Kavanaugh’s affirmation course of.
She sat subsequent to actress Alyssa Milano within the Senate listening to in 2018 in assist of Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford, whom she insisted was telling the reality about an alleged highschool sexual assault that ought to disqualify Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court docket.
Platner was dealing with a Democratic main problem from Maine Gov. Janet Mills earlier than she suspended her marketing campaign on April 30.
He now seems poised to win his occasion’s nomination within the June 9 election, barring an unprecedented swap between then and the November contest.
“The Governor stays on the poll, and within the wake of this week’s tales, folks throughout Maine are reaching out to inform her they’re voting for her and inspiring her to get totally again into the race,” a supply near Mills instructed CNN.
Platner has denied any assault allegations from his exes and vowed to remain within the race.
Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has additionally caught by his endorsement of Platner, with successful Maine important to his objective of Democrats retaking the Senate.
However not all of his colleagues are holding the road.
“Experiences of threatening habits and anti-semitism like those made towards Graham Platner are critical and deserve scrutiny,” stated Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), who’s retiring from workplace in January 2027.
“It’s additionally important to acknowledge how troublesome that is for the ladies who’ve come ahead,” Hassan added. “Character issues now greater than ever, and any high-profile marketing campaign together with Mr. Platner’s entails the shut examination of a candidate’s historical past, statements and habits, in addition to the candidate’s response to the stress that such examination entails.”
“In the end the folks of Maine will determine who has the character and judgment to finest characterize them,” she famous.
Reps for Gillibrand and the DSCC didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
