Graham Platner has made his status as a fully disabled veteran a central part of his insurgent campaign against Maine senator Susan Collins (R.). At the same time, he has refused to disclose whether the Veterans Affairs (V.A.) benefits that make up the vast majority of his income come with work restrictions—a critical distinction that could have legal implications for his campaign.
Platner told News Center Maine in October that he holds a 100 percent disability rating due to “a couple herniated discs,” a “wreck” of a shoulder, knees that “bother him,” and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and that, as a result, he receives roughly $4,800 a month from the V.A. While Platner has said that the 100 percent rating does not mean he’s incapable of performing physical tasks—a perception that he called “a fundamental misunderstanding around how the VA rating system works”—he has declined to provide further information about his benefits, including whether he falls under a designation known as Total Disability Based on Individual Unemployability (TDIU), which is granted when the V.A. determines that a veteran cannot maintain “substantial gainful employment.”
Such a designation is significant because those who receive benefits under TDIU are generally barred from working a job that provides income above the federal poverty level of $15,960 annually. Platner does not draw a salary from his oyster farm or from his campaign, according to his personal financial disclosure. But his wife, Amy Gertner, draws a salary from both entities, the disclosure indicates, raising questions about whether Platner is paying his wife rather than drawing a salary himself to avoid scrutiny from the V.A. The amount of money Platner’s wife receives from the oyster company is unknown—Senate candidates are required to disclose only whether a spousal salary exceeds $1,000—but campaign finance disclosures show Gertner received nearly $30,000 from the campaign between September 2025 and February 2026, nearly double the annual federal poverty level over the course of six months.
A former Platner campaign aide told the Substack Judge Street Journal that the campaign paid a salary to Platner’s wife rather than to Platner himself “for a few reasons”: “One, the optics of a candidate drawing a salary from the campaign committee isn’t great, though I don’t think your family getting paid from the campaign committee is great either,” the staffer said in November. “Two, if Graham drew a salary from the campaign, his disability status and his disability payments would be put at risk.”
Federal candidates are allowed to pay spouses and family members, but ethics rules stipulate that the payments must reflect the fair-market value of legitimate services performed for the campaign. Platner has said that his wife works full-time for the campaign as a “volunteer coordinator” and is paid appropriately for that work. But insiders questioned the legitimacy of the work arrangement. After Platner’s wife was put on the campaign payroll, aides struggled to “find things she was comfortable doing,” a source close to the campaign told the Washington Free Beacon, describing Platner’s wife as a “shy and introverted” person who “wasn’t comfortable making calls” or interacting with people.
“She wasn’t really doing anything for the campaign,” the source said.
Meanwhile, Platner told the New York Times that “My wife and I work incredibly hard and we probably make, like, $60,000 a year combined. We don’t have money left over.” Platner’s V.A. benefits account for over $57,000 over that sum, and Gertner’s salary from the campaign appears to have boosted their annual household income by 50 percent in just six months—and is set to double it by the end of September if she continues in the same role.
It’s also unclear exactly what Gertner does for Platner’s oyster farm, a small operation that counts as its top customer a restaurant owned by Platner’s mother. Gertner worked as a teacher until 2025, when she began “working alongside Platner” at the farm, according to local media accounts, including one from the Midcoast Villager that says Platner and Gertner “own and operate” the farm “together.” But the company’s website describes no such role for Gertner, and a campaign staffer told Judge Street Journal that her salary from the oyster farm “needed supplementing once campaigning began.”
Questions surrounding Platner’s benefits have picked up steam in Maine. Last month, CentralMaine.com published a letter from a Portland attorney noting that Platner “has not said” whether he is “unable to earn more than poverty level employment income,” writing, “The press, and we Democrats, should respectfully ask Graham Platner to disclose the assertions he made in his applications for his 100% VA disability rating, and offer detail as to how his mental health challenges may affect his capacity for stressful employment.”
The Portland Press Herald covered the issue days later in a piece headlined, “How can Graham Platner run for Senate with a 100% VA disability rating?” It notes that “Platner’s campaign declined to make him available for an interview on Friday or Monday,” that a “spokesperson did not answer a list of questions about his injuries” or “respond to concerns from critics,” and that “Platner’s campaign would not disclose his type of disability rating.”
If Platner’s benefits do come with income restrictions, he could attract scrutiny from the V.A. as he campaigns against Collins.
When the V.A. suspects that a veteran with a TDIU designation is concealing or rerouting income to maintain benefits, the agency will “send out an inspector to figure out what’s going on, and is this legit,” prominent veterans’ benefits attorney John Berry told the Free Beacon. “So the question becomes, what is the nature of the employment? And does the employment fit the definition of substantial gainful employment?”
A veteran with a TDIU designation can earn income above the federal poverty threshold, Barry explained, if that income stems from what is considered “sheltered or protected employment.” Such employment occurs when a veteran works for a business—often family-owned—that makes “extraordinary accommodations” to offset the veteran’s disabilities.
“So I represented people who, for instance, maybe have severe PTSD. They can still do work, and they’re working in a family business,” Berry said. “If the family had not made extraordinary accommodations that most workplaces would not make, this person wouldn’t be able to work. That’s not considered substantial gainful employment, even if they’re making a lot of money.”
In the case of income stemming from his oyster farm, Platner could argue that, as the owner of the business, he provides himself with such accommodations. Doing so, however, would undermine the notion that Platner is a blue-collar “oysterman” and “commercial fishermen,” as he is often described in media profiles. Income stemming from his campaign is harder to assess, according to Berry.
“I won’t comment on whether being a politician is substantial gainful employment, but that’s an interesting question,” he told the Free Beacon. “And I think that’s a great case, because, you know, what are the duties, right? And what are the disabilities?”
Platner’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Platner hasn’t said when he first received his 100 percent disability rating, but it appears to have been nearly a decade or more after he left the military in 2011.
He lived in Washington, D.C., for a few years after his service, but wrote in a Reddit post that the V.A. there was a “total pain in the ass to deal with. Long wait times, incompetent staff, seemingly endless bureaucratic hoops.”
That changed after Platner moved to Maine in 2016, where he said the local V.A. was “utterly incredible.”
“They cleared up an appeal I’d been waiting on for years in the space of two months, there is never a serious wait for care, and the level of care is just fantastic,” he wrote in a post.
By 2018, Platner had received a “90% disability rating” for maladies that included PTSD, traumatic brain injury, anxiety, and depression, according to a comment he posted on Reddit. During this time, he took a job as an overseas contractor, writing that he “held my nose and took the pay for long enough to put myself in a financially comfortable place.”
But he stayed in the job for just six months before returning to Maine, where he had purchased a home with a $200,000 loan from his father. At the time, veterans with a 90 percent disability rating could receive benefits of up to $1,783 per month, according to the V.A. But veterans with a 100-percent disability rating were eligible for much more—up to $2,900 per month.
At some point after Platner returned to Maine, he got the V.A. to approve him for 100 percent disability, although it’s not clear when.
While veterans with 100 percent disability are eligible for a property tax exemption in Maine, Platner didn’t claim this exemption for four years after buying the house in 2017, according to property tax records. He first claimed the total disability exemption in 2021 and has taken it every year since then, records show.
In 2021, Platner also posted regularly on Reddit, giving other veterans tips on how to get the V.A. to approve their claims or increase their disability ratings.
“Let’s take this moment for a PSA: PUT YOUR CLAIM IN NOW. Not next year. Not when things really start to fall apart,” he wrote in one post. “It doesn’t make you a leech or a pussy. This country pumped billions of dollars into the bank accounts of defense contractors, all on the backs of your suffering and sacrifice.”
“They won’t just give it to you, it’ll take patience and work. Contact the DAV, find a VSO, whatever,” he added. “But make the system pay for leaving you with aching joints and a drinking problem, and get treatment for those things.”
In another post, he advised a fellow veteran on how to get a rating increase post-service.
“[Y]ou can’t say your back hurts because aliens abducted you and dropped you from the UFO after the probing,” he said. “BUT you can lay out how while serving as an infantryman during combat operations in RC South you carried upwards of 100 lbs of equipment on numerous foot patrols, and on several occasions felt pain in your lower back after jumping over walls/falling out of trucks/getting blown up/etc etc (don’t lie, but outline every opportunity you had to injure your back in combat).”
“Submit that statement in tandem with a nexus letter from a doc (preferably a civilian one who will of course see obvious service connection) and you’ll have a good chance at a rating increase.”
A decade earlier, in 2012, he had sounded a different note, writing on Reddit that the “reason everything [at the V.A.] is clogged up is because of dudes falsifying claims for money.”
“Coming from an infantry background I can’t tell you how many guys I know get disability of some form who have no need for it, and who will openly admit in closed circles they gamed it for the cash,” he wrote.
In a 2021 Reddit forum called “Armed Socialists,” Platner praised a veteran who posted photos of heavily modified guns that he said he bought with his 100 percent disability benefits.
“Fuck Uncle Sam,” wrote another poster. “Fuck him and take his money,” replied Platner.
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