Graham Platner Mulling Senate-Race Exit After Rape Accusation
The scandal-scarred candidate is quickly losing supporters.
Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner indicated Monday he is considering exiting the closely watched race after a woman he once dated accused him of rape — and even Pine Tree State Democratic leadership finally called on him to withdraw.
His campaign postponed a series of events Sunday and Monday, while Bangor Daily News said he missed a Fourth of July parade, and political observers in D.C. and Maine expected another story to drop about the scandal-plagued oyster farmer.
Politico delivered. Maine resident Jenny Racicot, 41, told the outlet in a piece published today “she had an on-and-off relationship” with Mr. Platner, also 41, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”
Ms. Racicot told The New York Times in a June story he had come to her home after she told him not to in 2021 but said only that “she cut off contact soon after that episode and found his behavior ‘reckless’ and ‘unsettling.’” The Maine woman said she was reluctant to be identified as a rape victim but decided to give a fuller account after Mr. Platner and his allies claimed his conservative ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield, a central part of the Times story, was simply a political operative trying to take him down.
“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics but not supporting him as a person,” the liberal Ms. Racicot said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”
Mr. Platner responded in a video posted midafternoon to social media but offered no real rebuttal.
“I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false,” he said. “Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful of the political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
Mr. Platner won the June 9 Democratic primary to face the Republican, who’s been a senator since 1997, in November. But the deadline has not passed for the party to name a replacement, which the candidate hinted at.
“You never turned your back on me, and I will not turn my back on you now,” he said. “Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated, and we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
If a primary winner withdraws by 5 p.m. July 13, party officials have until July 27 to name a replacement candidate.
Mr. Platner has survived previous scandals. He covered up a tattoo of the Nazi Totenkopf, claiming he had no idea what it was, despite evidence to the contrary. And he won the primary despite the discovery of misogynist and hateful Reddit posts he’d made.
But his political days might finally be numbered. Supporters such as Congressman Ro Khanna and streamer Hasan Piker rescinded their endorsements of him Monday.
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