Graham Platner Hits Pause on His Campaign After New Sexual Assault Allegation: ‘Taking The Time to Reflect On the Best Path Forward’

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Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, said he would take “time to reflect on the best way forward” on Monday, following a bombshell report from Politico accusing him of sexual assault.

“The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks,” Politico reported, adding Racicot’s harrowing recounting of her allegation:

Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, 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.

Platner denied the allegation and sounded a defiant tone in his video address on Monday, but also made it clear his campaign may not continue.

“I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false,” Platner said, adding:

Over the last 10 months, I have been deeply humbled by the faith Mainers have put in me. You have welcomed me into your homes, into your places of work, into your restaurants, into your houses of worship. You have shown that a different kind of politics—one that puts the interests of people over corporations—is not just possible, but is inevitable.

This movement we have built—the largest volunteer base in the history of Maine politics, the hundreds of thousands of grassroots donors, and the supporters across the ideological spectrum—we were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, and a focus on defeating Susan Collins.

So, 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. Those were the goals when we launched this campaign, and they remain my goals today.

On June 9th, 154,058 Mainers—the most in primary history—voted to reject a broken politics beholden to Washington and the donor class. They voted for hope, for change, to take back our economy, to take back our power, and to take back our Senate seat.

Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me, and I will not turn my back on you now. 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.

As Maine goes, so goes the nation. As always, thank you.

Platner has been a lightning rod of controversy since first joining the race. Revelations of a Nazi tattoo on his chest and bigoted and bombastic past social media posts were followed by reports from other women calling his past behavior “unsettling.”

In early June, the New York Times reported that several women told the outlet that Platner “could be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but also demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful.”

Watch the clip above.

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