Rape allegation shatters Graham Platner’s far-left base, puts his campaign on death watch

Graham Platner is running out of friends.

The same left‑wing coalition that helped turn him into a rock star in Maine’s U.S. Senate race abandoned him Tuesday in the wake of a rape allegation that has thrown into turmoil the Democratic Party’s plan to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

The pressure on Mr. Platner to quit spiked Tuesday afternoon when far-left icon Sen. Bernard Sanders — the democratic socialist from Vermont who helped legitimize Mr. Platner’s “working‑class” insurgent bid — broke his silence and urged him to step aside so Maine Democrats could put a new candidate on the ballot.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the new poster boy of the party’s socialist wing, also said it was time for Mr. Platner to bail out of the race.

And the far-left group Our Revolution went a step further, calling for former state Senate President Troy Jackson — a fifth‑generation logger and popular liberal activist who lost the recent Maine gubernatorial primary — to replace Mr. Platner on the ticket.

Mr. Jackson also took steps of his own, filing paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to form an exploratory Senate committee, as the jockeying among other possible Platner substitutes intensified.

SEE ALSO: Sanders says Platner should quit Maine Senate race

Nirav Shah, who also fell short in the gubernatorial primary, and Jordan Wood, who failed to win the 2nd Congressional District primary, signaled interest. Other names circulating include Secretary of State Shella Bellows, the fourth‑place finisher in the gubernatorial primary, and Dan Kleban, co-founder of the Maine Beer Co. Some Democrats are still holding out hope that Rep. Jared Golden, who is not seeking reelection, would consider the slot.

Mr. Platner stayed mum about his plans, even as reports indicated that he wanted a say in who would replace him.

His campaign went into crisis mode Monday after Jenny Racicot, a 41‑year‑old Maine resident, said Mr. Platner raped her in 2021. She told Politico she dated Mr. Platner off and on for years and that he showed up drunk at her home uninvited late one night and forced her to have sex with him despite her repeated objections.

Mr. Platner said the allegations were false. He also said he was mulling the “best path forward,” signaling for the first time he was considering pulling out of the race.

It did not take long for some of Mr. Platner’s most high‑profile supporters — including Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona — to jump ship. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also yanked her support.

Mr. Sanders took more time. He surveyed the political mess for nearly a day before putting one of the likely final nails in Mr. Platner’s political coffin.

SEE ALSO: NYC’s Zohran Mamdani says it is time for Graham Platner to call it quits in Maine

“I have spoken with Graham Platner about the best path forward for Maine,” Mr. Sanders said on social media. “In the light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside.”

Under Maine law, Democrats need Mr. Platner to withdraw from the race by Monday to set the stage for them to replace him on the ballot. If he drops out by Monday, the Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to name a replacement candidate.

Republicans said Mr. Platner’s shadow will continue to hang over the race no matter what happens next.

“The Democrat candidate in Maine will either be an alleged rapist with a Nazi tattoo, or someone he selects with the same ‘values and vision,’” said Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported Tuesday that one of Mr. Platner’s former girlfriends said he used to remove condoms without her knowing during sex. The Platner campaign denied the new allegation.

The erosion of Mr. Platner’s left‑wing support is the latest chapter in what has been a wild ride for the first‑time candidate.

A former Marine and oyster farmer, he electrified the party’s base and steamrolled Gov. Janet Mills in the June primary. The victory came after he weathered early concerns about his past, from inflammatory social media rants about women drinking too much at bars to a Nazi symbol tattoo he later covered up to sexually explicit texts he sent to women after getting married.

Then came a New York Times report in early June in which three women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner described his behavior as unsettling and volatile, saying he drank heavily and was unfaithful.

He apologized for some of those episodes, and the strong support from Mr. Sanders and liberal activists helped insulate him from the political fallout. He folded the controversies into a broader message that if voters believed in transformative politics, they had to believe in the power of people to change.

He went on to win 72% of the Democratic primary vote — a race that effectively ended in late April when Ms. Mills, a beloved Democrat and staple of Maine politics who was backed by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, suspended her campaign in deference to Mr. Platner’s momentum in the race.

All that is unraveling since the rape allegation, with Mr. Schumer among the first prominent Democrats to call on Mr. Platner to leave the race.