, the embattled Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, suspended his campaign on Wednesday amid mounting controversies and growing calls from top Democrats in his home state, in the nation’s capital, and across the country for him to immediately quit the race.
Platner, a populist Democrat backed last September by progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was challenging longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a high-profile, combustible and expensive race in Maine, which is one of a handful that will determine if the GOP holds onto its slim Senate majority in November’s midterm elections.
“For the movement to continue, it cant be me. For that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” Platner said in a video posted to social media.
Platner’s exit from the race comes five days before a crucial deadline, which, if he had missed, would have prevented Maine Democrats from replacing him with a new nominee on the general election ballot.
The suspension of his campaign took place one month after Platner won a landslide victory in Maine’s June 9 Democratic Senate primary, but just two days after an explosive report on Monday afternoon contained an allegation of rape from a woman he previously dated.Â
Addressing those allegations, Platner said, “This is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It is not real.”
And Platner, who has run an outsider, anti-establishment campaign for nearly a year, pointed to the political class and argued, “the brutal political reality is 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 the things that we need to run a campaign,” he charged.
The allegation that triggered Platner’s exit from the race came from Maine resident Jenny Racicot, 41, who told CNN’s Jake Tapper that “by dictionary definition” Platner “raped” her.
“I thought, here’s a man who was drunk and who, by dictionary definition, raped me. And he’s blaming drunk women,” Racicot said. “So I just felt like that was a very odd take to have on that. And I also feel like with all of the comments that he made about women, sexual assault, rape, even, um, you know, the comments that he had made that was in The New York Times article about, you know, threatening people with rape, like, why does this person have this issue, like scattered throughout their life, throughout their commentary, like its on their mind?”
Racicot also said over the course of three interviews with Politico that Platner forced her to have sex five years ago against her will, a claim that Platner denied in the Politico story. Additionally, the report says that a man Racicot dated afterward confirmed she had told him about the incident, which was also corroborated by emails between Racicot and her therapist.Â
“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” Racicot told the outlet about the incident, which allegedly took place while Platner was “almost blackout drunk.” “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, This is no longer my choice.”
Racicot alleged that Platner entered her home uninvited and forced her to have unprotected sex despite her telling him to stop multiple times.Â
Racicot said in the report that “one of the reasons” she didn’t come forward until now was the “huge moral conflict” she had between her support of Platner’s politics and not supporting him “as a person.”
“I just want the truth out there,” Racicot said. “I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”
In a statement to Politico, Platner said, “These allegations are troubling, serious, and false. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.”
The Platner campaign also posted a video on X short
