Graham Platner kisses his wife, Amy Gertner, at their home on Nov. 3 in Sullivan. (Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press)
Shortly after he entered the U.S. Senate race last year, Graham Platner’s wife worried that sexually explicit texts between him and several other women exchanged during their marriage would be a problem for the campaign, two national news outlets reported Saturday.
Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, told a campaign aide about the messages before a Labor Day rally in Portland last year with Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Wall Street Journal said.
Gertner told the aide that she saw the messages in the spring of 2025, early into their marriage. A campaign official told the newspaper they had decided the texts were a private matter and continued the campaign.
Platner, a political newcomer from the Hancock County town of Sullivan, became the presumptive Democratic nominee in the Senate race after Gov. Janet Mills dropped out last month, though he still faces a challenge from long-shot candidate David Costello.
Platner’s campaign released a statement from Gertner Saturday in response to questions about the text messages. Gertner did not name the aide she confided in, but said she was “deeply hurt by her betrayal and the invasion of our privacy” with the public disclosure of the messages.
“I confided deeply personal details about my marriage to someone I considered a friend,” Gertner said. “In the months since, I have had to watch as she spread malicious gossip to anyone who would take her call.”
Gertner said that she and Platner have gone to counseling and have had to work on their marriage, but it is now “stronger than ever before.”
“I know who Graham is,” she said. “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.”
The New York Times reported Saturday that Gertner had confided in Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former political director who resigned in October after Platner came under fire for inflammatory comments he made on Reddit several years ago.
McDonald said Gertner told her Platner had been exchanging sexual messages with as many as a dozen women, while a current campaign official said the number was up to six, the Times reported.
McDonald did not respond to a voicemail message Saturday seeking an interview.
The texts are the latest in a string of negative information that has come out about Platner since he launched his campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins last August.
In addition to the series of now-deleted comments he made on Reddit about women, rape and his time in the Marines, Platner has been scruitinized for a tattoo he had on his chest that was linked to Nazi imagery. He has said he turned to online trolling when he was isolated and struggling with undiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder after four deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Platner has said he didn’t know the skull-and-crossbones tattoo he got on his chest with fellow Marines while in Croatia in 2007 strongly resembled a Nazi Totenkopf until last fall. He had the tattoo covered in October after revealing it in a podcast interview and facing backlash.
Still, Platner has outpolled and outspent his opponents. He has raised $16.3 million this election cycle compared to Collins’ $15.1 million, according to new federal campaign finance reports. She has spent $7 million, while Platner has spent twice that at $14.1 million. A recent poll conducted by he University of New Hampshire Survey Center found him leading Collins by 9 points.
