Graham Platner’s wife told campaign about sexually explicit texts he sent to other women

The wife of Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner told his campaign in 2025 about sexual messages he had sent to other women.

Amy Gertner, whom Platner has been married to since November 2023, told the campaign about the texts during an internal vetting process last year at the beginning of his campaign. Gertner’s disclosure of the texts were first reported by the Wall Street Journal. 

In a statement from Gertner provided by the Platner campaign, she wrote that they have gone through counseling and that their marriage today “is stronger than ever before.”

“I know the man I married and the husband he has been to me on the best and the worst days of my life. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t,” she added. 

She also notes how she shared “deeply personal details about my marriage” to an unnamed campaign staffer. 

“I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind — and I am deeply hurt by her betrayal and the invasion of our privacy,” Gertner wrote. 

Platner is the presumptive Democratic nominee who will likely be taking on Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the November midterm elections after his main Democratic primary opponent, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, dropped out of the race in April. He has faced controversy over several problematic internet comments he made, as well as for a tattoo he got during his time in the Marines that is widely recognized as a Nazi symbol. He later covered the tattoo up.

The winner of the Maine Senate race is expected to play a key role in which party controls the chamber after the midterms. Platner has been endorsed by, and campaigned with, progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He has ran a more populist campaign centered around his working-class background. 

In an April interview with CBS News’ Major Garrett on “The Takeout,” Platner said previous controversial opinions he held were due to post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as to his time serving in a military that he described as “a hyper-masculine, hyper-violent place.”

“We have a crude sense of humor in the infantry. We certainly have a, I would say, narrow view of a lot of topics, and that colored my opinions and my beliefs,” Platner said. “Over the years in between, I met a lot more people, had a lot more experiences, learned a lot more about the world. And my opinions have changed with it.”