Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Suspends Campaign Amid Assault Allegation

So here's the latest twist in one of the wildest Senate races this year: Graham Platner, the Maine oyster farmer and military veteran who was running as the Democratic nominee against Republican Sen. Susan Collins, just suspended his campaign after a woman publicly accused him of sexually assaulting her.

The accuser, Jenny Racicot, told Politico and CNN that she and Platner had a casual, consensual relationship starting in 2019, but that in late 2021 he showed up at her home drunk, uninvited, and forced himself on her despite her telling him to stop. She didn't pull punches describing it to CNN's Jake Tapper, saying Platner "by dictionary definition, raped me," and that she "basically felt safest just complying" once she assessed the situation. Platner has denied everything, calling the allegations "categorically false" and, later, "not real."

This wasn't Platner's first scandal — he'd already survived reports about a chest tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, deleted offensive Reddit posts, and a Wall Street Journal report about sexually explicit texts he sent while married. Democrats mostly stuck by him through all of that. But this allegation was the breaking point. Within days, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (who runs the Democrats' Senate campaign arm), Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, Ruben Gallego, and even early backer Bernie Sanders all pulled their support or urged him to drop out. The real gut-punch was the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee saying it simply wouldn't fund the race if he stayed on the ballot — that killed any realistic path to actually winning.

In an 11-minute video Wednesday, Platner announced he was suspending his campaign, but he was defiant about it. He insisted he's innocent and framed his exit as being forced by "the political establishment," not as any admission of guilt. He said he learned about the allegations through press inquiries with no time to respond before, in his words, the media and political establishment acted as "judge, jury and executioner."

Why does this matter to you, even if you don't live in Maine? This race was a genuine wildcard for Senate control this fall — Maine is one of the few states Democrats thought they could flip, since Trump lost it in 2024 but Collins has held her seat since 1996. Democrats need to net four seats to retake the majority, and losing a viable shot at Maine makes that math a lot harder. Now the Maine Democratic Party has to scramble to pick a replacement nominee through a hastily called convention, with names like Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former state Senate President Troy Jackson, and former Maine CDC head Nirav Shah already jumping in. Republicans, meanwhile, are already trying to make sure whoever replaces Platner still gets tied to the scandal — RNC Chair Joe Gruters said Democrats are "completely stained" by their association with him.