Senate hopeful Graham Platner of Maine has broken his silence after a Wall Street Journal report claimed that his wife, Amy Gertner, had previously alleged that her husband exchanged sexually explicit texts with other women during his marriage. Planter is an oyster farmer and former US marine, and is Maine’s presumptive Democratic nominee for the US Senate after his main competitor, Janet Mills, suspended her campaign last month.Graham Platner accuses media of trying to ‘rip apart’ his marriage amid explicit texts row (Photographer: Sophie Park/Bloomberg) (Bloomberg)Platner spoke to News Center Maine Sunday, June 1, with his wife by his side after a campaign appearance in Portland, dismissing the allegations.“It’s no surprise to me that the establishment media outlets are just going to run gossip instead of wanting to talk about the things that actually matter in this race, which are the material realities that Mainers are working with,” said Platner.Read More | Who is Graham Platner's wife? 5 things to know about Amy Gertner amid explicit texts row “Amy and I have a very loving and very happy marriage. They would very much like to try to rip that apart,” he added, and then spoke about closing hospitals, low pay for teachers and nurses and Mainers’ paychecks not going as far as they earlier did.“But of course, the powers that be do not want us to talk about that, and so they’re just going to do gossip instead,” Platner concluded.On being asked directly if the allegation were inaccurate, Platner said, “The Wall Street Journal and New York Times ran stories without any evidence besides the gossip from a former staffer. I’m sorry, that’s frankly journalistic malpractice.”“We talked about things in Amy and I’s marriage that we’ve gone through over the years. We talked about that, because that’s our marriage, and we discussed it with the campaign,” he insisted.What’s the controversy about?Platner had already been facing some controversies, including those related to past racist, sexist and homophobic online posts, as well as a now-covered-up tattoo of a Totenkopf, recognized as a Nazi symbol. He is vying to unseat five-term Republican senator Susan Collins.Read More | Graham Platner explicit texts row: Wife's emotional full statement after reports surface, ‘I trusted this person…’Platner’s team started opposition research on him to unveil new information during his bid for Senate after he launched his campaign last August before a Labor Day rally with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Back at the time, Gertner shared with the campaign’s then political director, Genevieve McDonald, that she had found sexually explicit messages he had sent other women on his phone in the spring of 2025. The two of them then started marriage counseling, and the campaign’s aides decided the messages were a private matter.Gertner spoke out shortly after the reports surface, saying she “confided deeply personal details about my marriage to someone I considered a friend,” and was “deeply hurt by her betrayal and the invasion of our privacy.” “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,” she added.