Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has suspended his campaign and says he plans to file paperwork to withdraw from the ballot in the general election, though he demanded that the process of replacing him reflect the voters who had propelled him to an unlikely nomination.
Platner said that he and his wife Amy “believe that for the movement to continue, it can’t be me” running, “and for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations.”
He added, “This is incredibly difficult, because I know that some will think that this is an admission of guilt, and I know it is not.”
Platner’s withdrawal comes days after a woman he’d dated said in interviews that Platner drunkenly forced her to have sex after she told him to stop. Platner on Monday denied the allegation, first made in an interview with Politico, but said he would be considering next steps for his campaign.
Facing sexual assault allegations, former supporters are calling for the Democratic Senate nominee to drop out.
For Democrats to reclaim the Senate majority, the party will likely have to win in Maine, where the incumbent Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, has defeated many challengers before. State law allows Platner to be replaced on the ballot if he withdraws by July 13. The replacement candidate must be named by July 27, leaving the party little time to find a replacement.
Earlier Wednesday, the Maine Democratic Party announced a plan to hold a nominating convention to fill the seat, if a vacancy arises.
A Marine veteran and oyster farmer running against the establishment, Platner won the Democratic primary last month, after his main opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign — she’d been backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Platner’s anti-billionaire, pro-union platform fired up the Democratic base, and he was polling competitively with Collins in the general election.
Democrats who once backed Platner, such as Mass. Gov. Maura Healey and Sen. Ed Markey, are pulling their support for Platner.
He had remained in the race through other controversies, including other allegations of misconduct and a tattoo that he’s since covered up of a symbol with Nazi connections. He’d defended himself in both cases.
But after Maine resident Jenny Racicot told Politico and CNN that Platner drunkenly entered her home in 2021, when they were in an on-and-off relationship, and sexually assaulted her, prominent political supporters of Platner’s began pulling their endorsements, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
“I have spoken with Graham Platner about the best path forward for Maine. In light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside,” said Sanders, one of Platner’s earliest and most fervent backers, in a statement Tuesday.
Hannah Pingree, the Democratic nominee for Maine governor, called for his immediate departure from the race, saying in a statement, “Democrats need a nominee who can beat Susan Collins in November. Graham Platner is no longer that candidate.”
In a brief statement, Collins called the allegations “appalling,” adding, “Nevertheless, it is not up to me to choose the Democratic nominee for Senate.”
In his video, posted just after 8 p.m. Wednesday, Platner insisted the allegations against him are false, but said it wasn’t the allegations alone that made he and his wife decide to pull out of the race, but the pressure the political establishment placed on him and the movement he’d built to prevent him from meaningfully campaigning.
And he emphasized the success of his movement, built outside the establishment, while advocating for it to stay at the heart of the the Democratic ticket for Senate.
“We went toe to toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the history of the world and we won,” Platner said. “We beat them on June 9th, in overwhelming numbers. We did it the right way. We built a campaign, we engaged in electoral politics, we motivated people, we banded together, we did it the way that we were told that we are supposed to make change and we won, and now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me.”
Read Graham Platner’s full message suspending his Senate campaign
Hey everyone, it’s Graham Platner here. I think, as many of you know, over the past couple days I have faced some very serious allegations, and I just want to make it clear, this is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It’s not real.
It has placed an immense amount of weight on me as I think about what needs to happen now. Amy and I are regular people. We were not looking for this experience. We were not looking to get into politics. We had no desire to run for office.
I just want you to think about, like, what you would do as a regular person in a position where a much larger world, large forces were working against you personally to accuse you of the worst thing that a person could do, and it was not remotely true.
I learned about this through press inquiries with no time to truly respond, no time for investigations, before a corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury and executioner. Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end.
I think it’s really important to understand why this is happening in the timeline, why this is happening right now. Much like October, when the first attack started, much like the news that was created the week before the primary, there is a reason that this is happening now. I only have until July 13th until I am officially the nominee. This was the last week to try to get me off of the ballot, and that’s why this is occurring.
It’s not the false allegations, though, that have brought us to where we are. It’s the fact that they are being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us. We live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish, that if they begin to succeed, they can be crushed.
What we have accomplished here, you made possible, the people of Maine, the volunteers, the voters, the grassroots donors and I have all the faith in the world that we could win if we could continue to harness that, but the brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us.
Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign. We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function.
Larger organizations, the national level party, the bigger donor networks, they have all committed to spending no money in this race, if I’m in it, they would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine.
What comes next needs to come from the people, needs to come from the people of Maine, needs to come from the voters who on June 9th at a strength of over 150,000 the largest number in the history of Maine primaries said no to this kind of politics, voted for a politics that would actually represent them, voted against the political system, against the donor class, against the entrenched forces.
And I’m not asking for how this process is going to work, I’m not trying to dictate to anyone who it should be or how we get there, but I will say this: it needs to be open, transparent, and democratic. It needs to be reflecting the will and the values of the people that built this movement, the people that showed up on June 9, people in DC need to stay in DC. Decisions should not be made in back rooms by people in places of political power. Party apparatchiks are not the ones to make these decisions. These decisions need to be made in the open by the people of this state, the people who got us here.
This is exactly the kind of political system that everyone voted against on June 9th, and for that reason we need to be assured that it is going to be open and democratic as we move forward.
Amy and I struggled about getting into this last summer, right around this time of year. We sat down and we looked at each other, and we said, if we believe in the kind of politics we think that we do we have to do this. Over the past couple days, really yesterday and today, we have had to have that exact same conversation.
We believe that for the movement to continue, it can’t be me, and for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations.
This is incredibly difficult, because I know that some will think it’s an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not. We’re not doing it because of the allegations, we’re doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power. And I also feel an immense amount of responsibility to everyone who has worked so hard to get us to where we are.
We went toe to toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the history of the world, and we won. We beat them on June 9th in overwhelming numbers. We did it the right way. We built a campaign, we engaged in electoral politics, we motivated people, we banded together, we did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change, and we won, and now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me. And so we’re suspending campaign operations.
I want to make clear, though, I intend to file my paperwork to withdraw. The process needs to assure that what comes next is reflective of the Mainers, who on June 9th turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics. It needs to be driven not from back rooms but by the will of the people, and the decisions that come next must come from that.
All we were asking for was health care, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities, instead of waging war overseas. We were asking for a fair system. We were asking for an end to the corruption, the end to the money in politics. We were asking for real democracy, and we did it the right way, and we won. But now the ball is in the court of the Democratic establishment.
My name might be on the ballot right now, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine. And on November 3, it needs to belong to the people of Maine, and the next Democratic senator for Maine needs to belong to the people of Maine. They need to reflect the will and the values of the people of this state.
I love this state. I love Maine, and I love Mainers in ways that I can’t really describe. I am immensely proud of what we have built, and I have the utmost faith that we will continue to build, and we will continue to move towards a better future. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank all of you, and keep fighting, we’re going to win someday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
