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.
You're up against fascists. Your comment translates to
"I'd rather die than fail this purity test"
Credible sexual assault accusations and a Nazi tattoo combined with his blackwater history are indictments on his character. If we're overlooking rape and Nazi shit we'd just be republicans.
Susan Collins isn't a fascist.
I often don't agree with her, but she voted with both the Biden and Obama administrations over 70% of the time.
And I reject that this is a "purity test." This isn't them not aligning 100% with some fringe ideology. This is someone who is literally a rapist. Literally raped real women by force.
If this is the best candidate we can put forward, we deserve to lose.
Every single Republican and moderate Democrat, regardless of voting record, is a fascist sympathizer.
"If this is the best candidate we can put forward, we deserve to lose"
OK so you are absolutely saying you would rather die than dirty your hands?
Look man, you're using a lot of phrases that don't really mean what you seem to think they do.
"Dirty your hands" usually means that you'll engage in some mud slinging or attack another candidates family or something. It doesn't mean supporting someone who has violently raped multiple women.
To turn it back on you, using the terms correctly, are you saying that a rapist with a Nazi tattoo is preferable to a moderate Dem so long as they can pass a purity test?
If by "purity test" you mean "would be willing to vote on incarcerating every sitting republican and establishment democrat in the country" then yes.
Our opponents just sentenced a dozen people to life in prison for printing magazines. Do you not think the stakes are high? We have, officially, reached kill or be killed.
The people printing the magazines were directly involved in shooting a police officer. The magazines were used as evidence to paint them as terrorists to get them longer sentences.
Now, I wholly disagree with painting them as terrorists to get longer sentences. That's definitely bad, and I hope it gets overturned on appeal.
But they were pretty involved in active criminal activity in which an officer was shot in the neck. They weren't arrested for "just printing magazines."
Two of them were not even present at the time of the shooting. This regime used NSPM-7 and the PA to get leftists on terrorism charges. They will do this again, it will be worse next time.
We are very close to masked men knocking down our doors and dragging us out in the middle of the night.
Do you think this is just going to go away? That everything is just going to work out? The tyrants will stop at precisely this amount of abuse of power and no further? Not once in history has a slide into authoritarianism just "worked out".
They were the functional equivalent of Jan6 rioters. Sure, not all of them killed a cop. But they were at minimum actively involved in the destruction of property during a riot that escalated to violence.
I've already agreed the elevation to terrorist charges were bad. But let's not pretend this was the gestapo pulling people from their beds for wrongthink.
Trump surrendered power after his first term. The pendulum was swinging away from authoritarianism. Everything was on the path to "just working out." Then the Dems screwed the pooch by putting forward crap candidates and it began swinging back. The answer to this isn't continuing to put forward awful candidates. And I have trouble coming up with one worse than a serial rapist with a Nazi tattoo.
What do you mean we're not at the point of gestapo pulling people from their beds? What the hell is ICE doing?
You act as though this is still a legitimate government with legitimate laws. It is not. The US government is no longer legitimate; we are in a high functioning failed state. The legality of the rioters is irrelevant, they are a part of our tribe and our tribe is targeted by a rival tribe. We cannot act like there is such a thing as the rule of law, we will bury ourselves in our sanctimoniousness.
The goal at this point is embrace, extend, extinguish.
EDIT: Also, to be clear, when you say things were going back to normal you're referring to the US just being a regular imperialist hell hole? "Holding steady" in that context is equally unacceptable.
I think your edit outlines that we are just going to disagree. The US has its flaws, no question, but I'm a far cry from calling it an imperialist hellhole. I like the US as a whole, and we may not be the "Greatest Nation In The World"™, and we've certainly been involved in our share of bad stuff. But I also think we've been on the right side of history a fair few times as well, and the average American has it pretty well off.
Now, I think this current administration is certainly going out of its way to destroy a lot of that. I agree that ICE is certainly gestapo adjacent (though not what we were talking about when I brought them up.) I agree that the rule of law is being stretched a little thin at the moment.
But, crucially, this is all stuff we've seen before. Andrew Jackson literally told the Supreme Court to try and enforce their ruling with whatever army they had to do so, and then kicked off the Trail of Tears. We've literally had a full scale Civil War and come back together as a nation afterwards. It's nowhere near as bad off as it has been before, and we survived it, and we absolutely will again.
It requires bold leaders in the civic arena who can stand up for decency and the rule of law. Not some tribalist nonsense where we advocate for killing anyone who doesn't wave our particular color of flag.
I'm sorry you've given up hope, but I promise we've come back from far worse as a nation. Two years from now we'll likely have a Democrat in the White House (if the party doesn't screw the pooch again), and we can start rebuilding. We're already seeing a blue wave take off in the House and Senate. In a couple years we can start rebuilding. Which doesn't diminish the damage that has been done, which is extensive.
But I think what we're seeing is the final throes of a dying party, and once the current administration is out, we'll see a big restructuring of the Republican party, as most of their voter base is passing on. The Overton Window will shift a good bit left, and we'll begin seeing slow but measured and sustainable progress forward.
I appreciate your sense of hope and optimism though I agree that we will certainly not see eye to eye here.
From my position I view the United States as the most direct and immediate threat to long term growth for the human race. I'm an engineer first and everything else second so for me it's a question of optimization. The US is holding back more efficient systems of resource allocation which is sub-optimal and that is fundamentally unacceptable.
I've appreciated the back and forth :)