A woman who previously dated Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner said he drunkenly forced her to have sex after she told him to stop, according to a Politico report released Monday, leading prominent supporters to pull their endorsements and throwing a must-win race for the party into turmoil.
Platner denied the allegation, but said he would be considering next steps for his campaign.
“Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting but mindful of the political reality it will inflict, we’re taking the time to reflect on the best path forward,” he said in a video released on social media.
Jenny Racicot, who lives in Maine, told Politico that Platner entered her home in 2021 while drunk and assaulted her. Racicot said she had been in an on-and-off relationship with Platner, but she cut off contact with him after that night and told him the incident wasn’t consensual. A voicemail left at a number listed for Racicot seeking comment did not receive an immediate response.
Platner’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email and phone message from The Associated Press seeking comment.
“Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false,” Platner said in his video.
Still, the allegation sparked a flight away from a candidate who has long been controversial. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who’d stood by Platner even as the insurgent candidate was hit with prior allegations, said Monday’s was enough. “I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line,” Khanna said. “These allegations are very serious and credible. Graham Platner should drop out from the race. I am withdrawing my endorsement.”
Edit: holy shit, these comments are insane.
Regardless of what you believe with this, Platner likely cannot win anymore. He has a week to do the right thing and drop out before he's fully locked in. If he actually gives any sort of a shit (and doesn't just want power, like rapists seeking office tend to), he needs to drop out yesterday.
This is the nail in the coffin for his campaign. It's not time to defend him no matter what, because there's still a week where a new candidate can be put into place. Instead of being mad at people not wanting to vote for him, you should start vocally supporting another candidate.
Yeah, I generally agree with always believing a victim. But in this case, the person is clearly also a political operative. Waiting until just after the primary makes me immediately question her story. At the very least, it shows she cares much more about electing a Republican than she does about actually receiving justice. If she is a victim, she's also an opportunist.
The party can still choose a new candidate if he steps down in the next week
If she were a political operative, she would have waited for the July 13 deadline to pass
No, don't you see, she deleted every text message, Instagram DM, call record and any other corrobarating proof that could ever backup the story and never filed a police report for these awful crimes and didn't say a word for the past year because she saw that no one took the first accuser seriously because she was a proud Republican and she actually totally, like, agrees with Platner's policies and is totally a Democrat [citation needed - allegedly voted Trump last year], so she did the wise thing and waited until the 25th hour of what is arguably the determining election of giving Dems the control of senate to write a hit piece about something that happened 7 years ago and hand the election to the 29-year incumbent demonstrably guilty of much worse. It's that simple.
She provided a ton of corroborating evidence. Stop using misinformation to create a strawman
Just to clarify, this is a different woman from the one whose actual job is "political operative". This woman could also be timing this for political effect, but supporting Republican efforts isn't her job like the main accuser in the NYT piece.
This woman also has text messages and emails to back up her claims.
No she doesn't. She said she deleted them. From the Politico article:
The other messages are ambiguous (they do not mention rape), or are a few weeks old, between her and her therapist.
She deleted only the messages with Platner.
Those other messages are not as ambiguous as those of you who want to support this rapist want to believe or push here.
Yeah, this one is a credible accusation
Hopefully someone progressive can replace platner if this causes his campaign to pull out
It won't be someone progressive. The people who would be choosing a last minute replacement are the people who didn't want him to win the primary.
There's no real viable replacement. Even if they choose someone who represented the policies the voters supported in him, which they won't do, Platner is the only one with the justification of being chosen by voters to justify people who didn't vote for him supporting him in the general. Anyone else is opening the door for finding some difference to now mean the candidate isn't the choice of the party.
And that's in the dreamland where the insiders choose a spare charismatic progressive outsider they had hanging around rather than someone who's in their club.
I wasn't referring to the earlier case. The woman here is a political operative because her first priority is politics, not justice or closure. You don't time your accusation to maximize political effects if you're not a political operative. Even if she is telling the truth, she is a political operative first, and a victim second.
I don't care if she's cynical or unlikable or politically motivated if he in fact raped her. He shouldn't have done that if he didn't want people to call him a rapist at inconvenient times.
I do care about her motivations, because motivations tell you a lot. It tells you that her first priority is politics. It's Schrodinger's assault - simultaneously so traumatic as to warrant making an accusation years later, yet so mild that the need for justice was so low that she was able to keep it to herself until the most opportune moment. It's suspicious as all Hell, and I wish folks like you just weren't so credulous.
You do realize that people lie, right? And Democratic politicians are particularly vulnerable to false accusations of sexual assault, as the base has been conditioned (for good reason) to by default believe victims.
But you have to keep your brain on. Believing victims is a good general rule. But only a Sith deals in absolutes. You should believe victims, but you also shouldn't be a naive fool. If all it takes for you to abandon a campaign is someone making a politically opportunistic assault allegation, then you will never see politicians you like elected.
Yes, as a general rule, false allegations are rare. But we're talking about a heated Senate seat, with millions of dollars on the line, where a false accusation can do real damage in the time it takes for the truth to come out. Normally there isn't a lot of motivation for people to make false assault allegations. But in cases like this, there's a huge motivation to do so.
This is media literacy 101. When someone has a huge motivation to spread false allegations, you need to treat them skeptically, even if "believe the victim" is generally a good first approach.
My issue with your comment was:
If she's telling the truth, I don't care if she's a political operative, because what she's telling the truth about is being sexually assaulted by Platner. If you are using the timing as a reason to believe she is lying, then I understand that. But I can't imagine caring about her motivation if she is telling the truth.
First, I'm not conceding that she's telling the truth. I can imagine caring about her motivations, because in this case, she is both a sexual victim and a sexual abuser, or at least an abuse enabler.
If she is telling the truth, consider who you're talking about here. You're talking about a sexual assault victim that is actively trying to harm other sexual assault victims. She's working to get a Republican elected to the Senate - the same Republican that played a role in getting Roe v. Wade overturned. You're talking about someone that is both a victim and an abuser. Collins winning will be a massive detriment to every citizen of Maine that is a victim of assault or rape.
That's why it matters. You don't get to play "believe every victim" card when you yourself are actively trying to victimize people.