Wife Says ‘No Marriage Is Perfect’ Amid Graham Platner Explicit Text Controversy

Graham Platner is facing controversy over his alleged explicit text exchanges with several women. His wife has called the media reports “shameful.” The Maine Democrat recently shared a video featuring comments from his wife, Amy Gertner.

In the five-minute video, Gertner did not directly address the controversy surrounding her husband’s alleged s-xually explicit text exchanges. However, she referred to the media reports as gossip. In the self-recorded video, she said, “I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip.”

Gertner added, “No marriage is perfect, and I don’t want a perfect marriage. I want my marriage.”

The controversy stemmed from a report by The Associated Press. Genevieve McDonald, who was a former campaign manager for Platner’s Democratic nomination in the Senate race, told the outlet that he was “s-xting multiple women while married.” McDonald added that “the campaign tried to assess that as an election vulnerability.”

However, it was Graham’s wife, Gertner, who first informed the campaign about the messages. According to an earlier report by The Wall Street Journal, Platner’s wife told the campaign about the messages she had discovered on his phone last year. She wanted to make sure they would not become an issue for his election bid.

Gertner said Platner’s campaign team reportedly decided to keep the texts private. The couple was handling the situation themselves, as they were also in counseling.

On May 31, Platner dismissed McDonald’s claims. When asked whether he was saying the text messages did not exist, he said, “I’m confirming that what Genevieve McDonald said in The New York Times is not true.” He was referring to another report by The New York Times published on May 30.

Platner also said that he and his wife spoke with the campaign about their marriage. While the campaign did not directly disclose the text messages to The Associated Press, it forwarded a statement from Gertner to the outlet.

Gertner said that McDonald’s disclosure of the closed-room conversation felt like a betrayal, which “deeply hurt” her. In the statement, she wrote, “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.”

McDonald initially wasn’t named in the Wall Street Journal story. However, she said she wanted to be publicly named in the New York Times story. On May 30, she wrote on Facebook that Platner’s campaign had “demanded” she retract her statements made to the outlet. Otherwise, she would be accused of violating the couple’s trust. “His consultants greatly overestimate how much I do not aspire to be them,” McDonald wrote on Facebook.