Senator Cory Booker said Sunday that he had “concerns” that the candidacy of Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, could be damaged by recent revelations, including that Mr. Platner exchanged sexual messages with women outside his marriage.
Asked on ABC’s “This Week” if he was worried that Mr. Platner’s messy personal history could hurt Democrats’ chances of winning a potentially critical seat in the battle for Senate control, Mr. Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, said: “Yeah, I have concerns. That guy has questions to answer. And that’s what campaigns are for.”
Mr. Booker added that “so much is riding on Democrats’ taking control of the Senate,” saying that the country needed a check on an “out-of-control president” who he suggested was driving up costs of health care, child care and gas.
Mr. Platner’s fiery progressive campaign has become a movement in Maine. But his personal history, which includes making inflammatory statements online about women and other topics, has threatened to amplify Democratic anxieties about his race.
On Sunday, Mr. Booker and other Senate Democrats were left to answer questions about news reports a day earlier that Mr. Platner’s wife had previously told his campaign about the messages with other women. Officials with the campaign arm of Senate Republicans seized on the news, circulating reports and attacking Mr. Platner.Among Democrats, Mr. Booker, a former presidential candidate who is seen as a potential contender in 2028, stood out in his expression of uneasiness.
The Platner campaign did not immediately comment on Mr. Booker’s remarks.
Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, said that he was not focusing on the Maine race and that he had never met Mr. Platner. “I will work with whoever the people of Maine elect,” Mr. Kim said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But I hope that they elect somebody that is going to stand up to this president.”
Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, defended Mr. Platner, saying on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Mr. Platner, a combat veteran who says he has struggled with PTSD, had “put his life on the line for this country.”
“He has certainly admitted that he has made mistakes,” Mr. Murphy said. “But I think this is going to be a pretty clear contrast in Maine between somebody who has spent his life protecting us versus somebody who seems to be protecting Donald Trump’s corruption.”
Mr. Platner is trying to unseat Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, in a state that Mr. Trump lost by about seven percentage points in 2024.
Genevieve McDonald, who served as political director for the Platner campaign until October, said Mr. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, once told Ms. McDonald that Mr. Platner had exchanged sexual messages with as many as a dozen women. Ms. Gertner was concerned that her husband’s behavior could become a political liability, Ms. McDonald said. A current Platner campaign official acknowledged that he communicated with up to six women, and said the conduct stopped before the campaign launched.
Ms. Gertner alerted the campaign to the texts last summer, but their existence emerged publicly in news reports by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal on Saturday.
Ms. Gertner said Saturday that her marriage was strong, and she denounced “negative stories on Graham.”
“No marriage is perfect, and I don’t want a perfect marriage,” Ms. Gertner said in a direct-to-camera video published Saturday evening. “I want my marriage, and I want to be married to Graham.”
