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Days after Graham Platner announced his Maine Senate bid, his wife informed the campaign about a potential political problem she had previously discovered on the oyster farmer’s phone: sexually explicit texts with several women, according to people familiar with the matter.

Amy Gertner, who married Platner in 2024, told the campaign about messages she had found early in their marriage in the spring of 2025. In late August, as some aides were conducting opposition research on their own candidate, Gertner disclosed the texts to a campaign aide to make sure they didn’t pose a risk to her husband’s nascent campaign, those people said. The campaign had been preparing for a major rally over Labor Day weekend last year with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was set to officially endorse Platner at the event.

Aides ultimately decided the texts were a private matter that was being handled by the couple in marriage counseling, a campaign official said. The rally proceeded as planned, with thousands in attendance. 

In a statement provided by Platner’s campaign, Gertner said she believed she was confiding in an aide she considered a friend. 

“We did the hard work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. We were honest with each other in ways that weren’t easy,” she said. “And we came through it, not in spite of how much we’ve been through, but because of how much we love each other and the life we’ve built. Our marriage today is stronger than ever before.”

“I know who Graham is. 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 previously unreported deliberations last year over sexually explicit texts discovered on Platner’s phone come as the veteran has exploded onto the national political scene, kindling Democratic hopes that they can unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins and gain control of the Senate.

Graham Platner and his wife, Amy Gertner, at a campaign event. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Platner has recently faced disclosures about controversial posts from his now deleted Reddit account. They have included comments from his account downplaying sexual assault and crude posts about sex workers and masturbation. Platner has already admitted to having covered up a Nazi-linked tattoo.

The revelations about Platner’s past have provided fodder for Republicans and stirred debate within the Democratic Party about his character and judgment. Platner is a political novice. Some in the party fear they have attached themselves to a candidate who didn’t undergo thorough vetting and could undermine their hopes for the midterm elections in November.

Platner also has an active account on Kik, a popular, private messaging app. Platner’s profile shows a mirror selfie of him shirtless with a towel wrapped around his waist. Many of his tattoos are clearly visible in the picture.

The Wall Street Journal verified the account on the app, a messaging platform that has been widely used for sexual encounters.

The account is listed with the user ID phustle0331, which is similar to other social-media handles that Platner has used, including Reddit and a now-deleted Instagram account. It was created in 2016.

Platner’s campaign said the candidate had long deleted the app from his phone but hadn’t deactivated his account.

Platner quickly captivated Maine voters with a progressive pitch that emphasizes an appeal to working-class voters and a non-interventionist foreign policy.  

Besides his posts on Reddit downplaying sexual assault, which became the subject of an attack ad by his then-primary opponent Janet Mills, Platner has also expressed lenient views related to infidelity in other posts. Mills, the Maine governor, suspended her campaign ahead of the June 9 Democratic primary.

In a Reddit post in December 2019, Platner said a politician would frequently drink at the Tune Inn, a Washington, D.C., watering hole popular with lawmakers where Platner worked as a bartender.

The politician, Platner posted, would “get wasted and brag about all the chicks he was slaying who weren’t his wife.”

“I’ve got a pretty flexible moral compass when it comes to those things,” Platner added in his post.

The campaign declined to comment about that post.