When the story broke this past weekend that the Democratic frontrunner for U.S. senator in Maine, Graham Platner, had exchanged sexually explicit texts on the messaging app Kik with women outside his marriage, the first acknowledgement the public saw from Platner’s campaign came not from the Senate candidate, but via a lengthy video from his wife, Amy Gertner.

In the video, which Platner shared on his X account with the text “A message from my wife Amy,” Gertner appears frustrated. She rambles, she even swears a little, as she voices her exasperation that the media was focusing on her marriage rather than the policies her husband is campaigning for. Platner has denied statements related to the messages.

It’s hard to watch, but like so much of the Platner campaign, it’s compelling and authentic. The video is a far cry from the polished “60 Minutes” interview that Hillary Clinton gave in 1992 to tamp down rumors about her husband’s alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers, stating, “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” referring to the “Stand by Your Man” artist. It’s very different from the gilded, well-lit interview that Melania Trump gave to Anderson Cooper as she covered for her husband’s “grab them by the p––––” comment, dismissing it as boys-will-be-boys “locker room talk.” Very different from the footage of Silda Wall Spitzer silently standing beside her husband, then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, her face drained and exhausted as he spoke at a press conference about his involvement in a prostitution ring.

But in the end, it is still all too familiar: the politician’s wife answering for her husband’s alleged misdeeds, not the man owning up to what he allegedly did.

In 2009, when Jenny Sanford declined to stand by the side of her husband, then-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, at the press conference where he admitted to his affair, her absence was so noteworthy it made headlines.

Spitzer, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Pete Hegseth, Mark Sanford, John Edwards. American politics is filled with men who make a lot of mistakes. And often, their wives are used as the human shield for their husband’s failings.

Although the year is 2026, and the candidate is of a different generation and the medium is social media, the playbook is the same: Use the wife to fix a husband’s mess.

At its heart the issue is not whether Gertner should defend her husband’s increasingly controversy-riddled campaign. That’s her choice. And the voters of Maine get to decide their own representation.

Alex Seitz-Wald, editor of the Midcoast Villager in Maine, observed that voters seem to be feeling a little worn out. Maine politics are not national. As an Iowan, I would never dream of telling a Mainer how to vote. But this controversy is happening in an America that has regressed.

Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are yet to find justice from an administration more interested in going after political enemies than predators. Dr. Mehmet Oz and Vice President JD Vance are trying to force pronatalism on us; women are coming forward after decades with horrifying allegations of sexual assault against former Rep. Eric Swalwell (he has denied wrongdoing). And this is all occurring as women can claim fewer rights than they did five years ago.

Lyz Lenz

Lyz Lenz is the author of the book “This American Ex-Wife.” She lives in Iowa and writes the newsletter “Men Yell at Me.”