Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee in Maine's 2026 Senate race, still has an active profile on Kik, the anonymous messaging app that a national child-safety organization labeled a "predator's paradise", even as his campaign insists he deleted the app from his phone long ago.

Fox News Digital reviewed Platner's Kik profile and found it still live, complete with a sexually suggestive photo showing the candidate's naked torso with a towel draped around his waist. Platner created the account in 2016. His campaign has not explained why the profile remains active.

The revelation lands on top of a widening cheating scandal that has already raised serious questions about Platner's judgment and character, questions that even members of his own party have acknowledged he must answer. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Platner sent sexually explicit messages to multiple women while married to his wife, Amy Gertner, whom he wed in 2023.

A platform with a documented child-safety record

Kik is not just another chat app. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation placed it on the organization's "Dirty Dozen" list in 2023, describing the platform as facilitating "predatory behavior and child sexual exploitation." Users need only an email address to create an account. There is no enforceable age-verification mechanism.

Roughly 70 percent of Kik users are estimated to be between 13 and 24 years old, according to multiple industry reports cited by Fox News Digital. Bark, a parental-control and online-safety platform, rated Kik the worst app for severe sexual content in 2024.

The platform's track record in Platner's own state makes the situation harder to dismiss. Between 2023 and 2025, at least four Maine men were sentenced for distributing child pornography or soliciting nude pictures from underage girls by posing as minors while using Kik.

Fox News Digital noted there is no evidence Platner communicated with minors, and it remains unclear who he messaged on the platform. But for a man seeking a seat in the United States Senate, maintaining an active, and suggestively photographed, presence on a platform with that documented record is a choice that invites scrutiny all on its own.

The campaign's shifting story

Over the weekend, the Platner campaign told reporters that Platner deleted the Kik app from his phone "long before" The Wall Street Journal's reporting. That claim drew a distinction between removing an app from a phone and actually deactivating an account, a gap Fox News Digital's review made plain. The profile is still there. The photo is still there.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Platner campaign for comment on the active account but did not hear back. The silence speaks for itself.

The sexting scandal first broke when The Wall Street Journal reported Platner's explicit messages to multiple women. Gertner, his wife, discovered those messages in spring 2025 and later divulged them to a since-departed campaign official.

Rather than address the substance, Gertner released a video Saturday evening defending her husband and attacking the press. She called the coverage "gossip."

"It makes me really angry, disappointed. And I find it really shameful that there's a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on."

Gertner described her marriage as "great." She is listed as a visible participant in Platner's campaign and is financially compensated in a volunteer coordinator role, a detail that makes her defense something less than a disinterested testimonial.

A pattern, not an isolated incident

The Kik account and the cheating allegations do not exist in a vacuum. They sit alongside a growing catalog of controversies that have dogged Platner's candidacy and raised pointed questions about whether Democrats vetted their nominee at all.

Platner previously posted vulgar messages on a since-deleted Reddit account. In one post, responding to a user concerned about exploitation of female prostitutes in Colombia, Platner wrote: "You don't have much experience with Latin American hookers, do you?"

In another Reddit exchange, he dismissed the idea that marital fidelity reflects on a person's trustworthiness, a position that reads differently now. Democrats who once championed the #MeToo movement have been notably quiet about the implications.

"I've heard that idiotic sentiment made within the confines of the the [sic] military. 'If you can't remain faithful to your wife, how can you remain faithful to your comrades?' Well, I have many good buddies who lied and cheated with women, and yet were straight shooting hard men when it came to their work."

He continued: "I find it is a sentiment only held by moral relativists who need something to cry about, intelligent people realize they are not mutually exclusive."

Those posts have since been deleted, along with others in which Platner called himself a communist, denigrated rural White people as "racist" and lacking intelligence, and singled out Black people for not tipping well. The deletions do not erase the record. Fox News Digital captured the content before it vanished.

The tattoo, the endorsements, and the vetting question

Then there is the tattoo. Platner has faced scrutiny over a black skull-and-crossbones chest tattoo described as having Nazi-linked origins. He said last year he got it while out drinking with fellow Marines in 2007 during leave in Croatia and denied knowing the symbol's connection. At least one Democrat has publicly called the tattoo "disqualifying."

The cascade of problems has reached high enough that Sen. Cory Booker acknowledged Platner "has questions to answer" following the latest scandal, a notable concession from a sitting member of the candidate's own party.

Platner spoke at a campaign event in Portland, Maine, on May 17, 2026, pressing forward as if the controversies were background noise. But the questions keep multiplying. Taya Kyle has condemned Platner for disparaging her late husband, the decorated Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, another episode that suggests a pattern of reckless conduct rather than a single lapse in judgment.

The broader issue for Democrats is institutional. Party leaders endorsed Platner and elevated him as their standard-bearer in a competitive Senate race. The question is whether anyone looked closely before handing him the keys. It would not be the first time Democrats endorsed a candidate whose background warranted far more scrutiny than it received.

What remains unanswered

Several basic questions remain open. When was Platner's Kik profile last used? Who did he message? What specifically did the Platner campaign mean when it said he deleted the app, and why didn't anyone deactivate the account itself once the scandal broke?

The campaign's refusal to respond to Fox News Digital's latest inquiry does not help. Nor does the attempt to wave away a cheating scandal as "gossip" while the candidate's half-dressed photo sits on a platform where at least four men in his own state were recently sentenced for crimes against children.

No one has accused Platner of crimes. But voters are entitled to weigh a candidate's judgment, honesty, and pattern of behavior, especially when the candidate himself once argued that cheating on your spouse says nothing about your character. Maine voters can decide for themselves whether that theory holds up.

When a man running for the Senate can't even be bothered to close an account on a platform known for child exploitation, the problem isn't the media asking questions. It's the candidate who won't answer them.