Shortly after Graham Platner launched his bid for a Maine Senate seat last year, his wife Amy Gertner told aides that she had seen sexually explicit texts on his phone, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The disclosure, which occurred in late August, came when aides were conducting opposition research. Gertner said she had told the campaign aide about the texts to several women, to make sure they didn’t pose a risk to her husband’s campaign, the WSJ reported.
In a statement provided by Platner’s campaign to the WSJ, Gertner, who married Platner in 2024, said she believed she was confiding in an aide she considered a friend.
A campaign official told the WSJ that after being told about the texts, they decided the texts were a private matter for the couple to address in marriage counseling.
Platner, the presumptive Democrat nominee who will face Susan Collins in the November election, has been criticized for controversial internet posts and a chest tattoo resembling the Totenkopf symbol adopted by the Nazi SS during World War II.
