Like nature, politics abhors a vacuum. The state of Maine has an excess of both. On Wednesday night, a pleasant if unremarkable house in the village of Sullivan had attracted a small gathering of news reporters. Hours earlier, its occupant, the Democratic senatorial candidate Graham Platner, had announced his intention to quit the race just days before the July deadline. He did so in a video glumly and trenchantly denying a series of allegations made against him by a number of women, the most recent of whom, Jenny Racicot, gave a harrowing and detailed account of a sexual assault that occurred at her home five years ago.
“For the movement to continue, it can’t be me and for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” he said on Wednesday.
“This is incredibly difficult because I know that some will think of it as an admission of guilt. We’re not doing it because of the allegations; we are doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power. 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 we were told to make a change and we won. But now they are not going to let us count. Not if it’s me.”
It marked a dismal ending to a previously dazzling political campaign that had sprung from nowhere. For months, though, Platner had batted away several accounts of dark behaviour, which he acknowledged as the flawed actions of a military veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Previous media reports included accounts of old misogynist social media posts and a Nazi-associated “Totenkopf” tattoo on his chest, for which he apologised and explained away as an act of foolishness on a drunken night out during military leave in Croatia in 2007.
RM Block
Platner’s unlikely pathway into politics had become part of his emergence story. After several tours of Iraq and Afghanistan and a return to Maine where he worked as an oyster farmer, he portrayed himself as a reluctant candidate. His wife, Amy Gertner, whom he married in 2023, was a prominent part of his campaign story: just last April, she spoke with powerful eloquence about a recent miscarriage the couple had gone through and also defended her husband, through a video, after separate allegations of misconduct.
In little over a year, Platner had fronted a grassroots Senate campaign that tapped into economic and civic frustrations Mainers had been absorbing for decades. But after last week’s allegations, senior supporters such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders called on him to drop out.
The scandal has presented the Democratic leadership with a new crisis. Many senior figures had been reluctant subscribers to Platner, whose campaign completely steamrolled the establishment favourite, current Maine governor Janet Mills. He was a gruff but highly effective communicator who turned up in plaid and denim and reflected both the common worries of Mainers, particularly its younger demographic, and a conviction that he had the energy and authenticity to become a different kind of politician.
Instead, he exits leaving an impossible mess for the Democratic Party battling for a Senate seat that is regarded as potentially holding the balance of power after November.
Within Maine, a legion of Platner’s supporters – who just eight days ago held the lead against Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent since 1996, according to the Maine Beacon – are now left with a sense of betrayal. The many Democrats who endorsed Platner, from congressman Ro Khanna to John Favreau, the former Obama speech writer and co-host of Pod Save America, have had to walk back their earlier endorsements. “These are awful, credible allegations,” Favreau posted on Monday while calling on Platner to drop out.
“It’s not abundantly clear that he just hasn’t been honest about his past and can’t be trusted as a candidate in office.”
Republicans can use the debacle to endlessly prosecute their opponents, not just in the Maine election but also by drawing parallels between Platner’s withdrawal from the race and former president Joe Biden’s exit from the 2024 presidential election just weeks before the party primary. Once again, goes the argument, they have ignored the wishes of their voters.
“It’s really hard to explain,” Scott Brown, the Republican Senate candidate in New Hampshire told Kellyanne Conway on Fox News on Wednesday evening.
“You look at Corey Booker [New York Democratic senator] and he said: we just need a win. So, the standards obviously have been reduced, no longer the party of JFK or Clinton or even Obama. It’s the Platner party, the Mamdani party, and the Democratic socialists are trying to take it over. And you have Elizabeth Warren saying, ‘he is my kind of guy’. And Bernie Sanders pushing him and others like him, trying to destroy not just the Democrat party but, I feel, the country.”
US president Donald Trump, asked about the development as he left the Nato conference in Ankara, struck a notably measured note.
“It’s really a question of whether or not you believe the woman. A lot of people say big falsehoods. He’s in a bind.”
Reporting from Sullivan, New York Times journalist Tim Balk portrayed the Platner home as quiet, with a lone light shining on the first floor and the upper storey in darkness. “Two of his advisers left the house this afternoon. A dog has been howling inside, and the sun is setting.”
Within hours though, several new names and faces stepped forward to announce themselves as in the running for the newly revived Democratic primary in advance of the July 27th deadline. One of those, Dan Kleban (48), the co-founder of the Maine Beer Company, was asked by Kaitlan Collins on CNN whether he would, if elected, vote for Chuck Schumer continuing as the Democratic party’s Senate leader.
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“I would not vote for Chuck Schumer as leader. I am running to be a new voice in the Senate, a new generation of leadership. I think it is time for some turnover and just as we need new senators I think we need a new generation of leadership.”
Graham Platner may be gone, in a welter of recrimination and regret for the party, but the mood for radical change among Maine Democrats will remain on the ballot.
