Vetting

Platner

*Some names and details have been changed to protect identities.

Jennifer was in her early 30s when she and her husband divorced. She had two little girls and worked as a nurse. She started thinking about dating about a year after her divorce. She was introduced to a paramedic working a few towns over, and they hit it off.

They started dating exclusively within weeks.

Jennifer’s new boyfriend seemed to be in love with her and asked her for selfies often — she usually sent one over. He also asked for more risqué photos the longer they dated, and she obliged. After all, they were in a relationship, and she was flattered that he liked the way she looked. She sent several nude or half-nude photos to him over the course of a year.

And then Jennifer found out that her paramedic boyfriend had several girlfriends in several counties. She also found out that he had shared her intimate photos with some of his friends and coworkers.

She was devastated, but she moved on.

That was over a decade ago, and Jennifer is now remarried with a new baby and a new job working in politics and fundraising. It was at this time that I became familiar with Jennifer and her work.

She is smart and progressive and cares about her community and state and understands the policies needed in healthcare. She is an advocate for the disabled community, and she works tirelessly to help marginalized communities get the healthcare services they need.

I have told her on many occasions that she should run. Many, many occasions.

Jennifer has turned me down every time I have offered to help her run. And she eventually told me why she refuses to run when she knows she is more than qualified and can run a good campaign.

The nude photos.

Jennifer said she contacted her ex after their breakup to ask that he delete the photos, and he told her he did, but she still has a hard time believing him. She said that she knows she could raise a lot of money to run and would therefore be a credible threat to a Republican opponent, and she has always feared that opposition research could dig up the boyfriend and the photos.

The pictures still haunt her. She is adamant that she will never run herself because of the embarrassment of photos she consensually sent to a boyfriend a decade ago that could be leaked.

I met Becky, who is a community advocate, and is retired from teaching. I asked her to run for office a few years back and she said she couldn’t because her oldest son had been convicted of minor in possession of alcohol at a college party years ago. She was afraid that opposition research would find his conviction and publish it.

Her son is now working as a teacher, and she was afraid to hurt his career by running for office.

I know Stacy, who is retired from the electric company as an Administrative Assistant, but she won’t run because she had a stint of bad health years ago and ended up with thousands of dollars in medical bills and a bankruptcy due to those bills.

She is embarrassed of the financial state that so many Americans face every day.

I know Joyce, who would never consider running because she has three speeding tickets, and Mary, who won’t run because she is 65 and considers herself too old.

And then there is me.

I was asked to run for years before I actually did because I was worried about my family. I didn’t want my boys to suffer the consequences of their mom going up against the GOP supermajority and all of its money. I didn’t want my husband to have to bear the comments and the actions of those who didn’t want me in office.

But more than that, I had my own dirty secret. An embarrassing secret.

I debated running for office for years because I had an old tax bill — that was paid off in full — but I was worried that my late payment would make me look irresponsible to voters a decade later. I agonized over that mistake for years before deciding to run.

And it did indeed come out to the public. There was post after post after post on social media by Missouri GOP insiders, and it stung, but it didn’t work as the GOP wanted. No one was particularly interested in my late payment as it turned out.

It seems there are a whole lot of folks struggling to pay their monthly bills, and too many could relate to my own struggle.

I did get skewered on Facebook on the local Republican page, but it just wasn’t enough to do more damage to my candidacy — I was already damaged running as a Democrat in rural red Missouri. It seems a late tax payment just made me more relatable.

Women self-vet themselves harder than any oppo research could vet them. They tend to judge themselves in too harsh a light on things that most of us have done.

Women are harder on themselves when thinking of running for office than the voting public would be. We hold ourselves to a higher standard in many cases. A higher bar. And that’s not a bad thing, except when the standard isn’t universally held.

Some women use fear to disqualify themselves for office, while some men bypass it entirely.

I am speaking specifically about Graham Platner. A progressive candidate for Senate in Maine. The hardworking regular guy who managed to win the nomination for Senate.

The problem isn’t that he is a progressive and therefore not vetted — information has been leaking for months — his folks had to know details would eventually come out. The problem is a man who knows his own history running for higher office in the first place.

Platner has been accused by a former girlfriend of sexually abusing her. He has stated the allegation is false, and of course he is innocent until proven otherwise. But this isn’t a one-off accusation.

In June, The New York Times published accounts from three women who previously had romantic relationships with Platner, and characterized his behavior as "unsettling." They described how Platner could be demeaning toward women, and in one instance, physically threatening.

The point of my essay isn’t to say, “Women good. Men bad,” or to imply Platner is guilty of any crime. It is to say that we need to talk to candidates about the things that should keep them from running vs things that are common and not likely to hurt a candidacy.

There is a certain amount of arrogance that is needed to run for office, but I think there is also a certain amount of fear needed. That fear should do the vetting for candidates, even before the opposition research, but obviously it isn’t applied equally across all candidates.

In my experience, more women seem to internalize the fear and miss the moxie.

Several women coming forward with allegations of harmful behavior should be vetted, and if found credible, end a candidacy. A speeding ticket or a child’s MIP or a consensual photo sent to a boyfriend ten years ago shouldn’t close the door on a candidacy.

I hope we recognize the qualified people who think they can’t run versus those who shouldn’t.

~Jess