Dem Graham Platner cancels multiple Maine Senate campaign events, reflects on ‘path forward’ after bombshell sex assault accusation 

WASHINGTON — Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has cleared his campaign schedule and is considering next steps after bombshell allegations of sexual assault from ex-girlfriend were published.

Read more Graham Platner’s ex Jenny Racicot accuses him of rape, says Maine Senate hopeful was ‘very drunk and wouldn’t take no for an answer’

The former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, told Politico that Platner drunkenly forced her to have sex with him in 2021 — allegations which the candidate immediately denied as “troubling, serious and false.”

The Platner campaign, hours before the article was posted, had indefinitely postponed town halls in Augusta on Sunday and in Gorham on Monday, as well as an event in Sanford whose listing was taken down.

Gorham Democrats claimed Monday morning that the Senate candidate was “not feeling well.”

Last month, The New York Times published a story about six ex-girlfriends of Platner, three of whom alleged he “hated women” — with one alleging he twisted her arm before locking her in her room during an argument, among other acts of physical abuse or intimidation.

Racicot was interviewed for the Times’ piece and recounted Platner’s inebriated arrival at her home in 2021, without any accusations of rape.

The 41-year-old told Politico she came forward because her side of the story had been skipped over due to the excessive focus on another ex-girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, whose allegation of physical abuse was downplayed due to her ties to the Republican Party.

“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she also said.

Now, Racicot added, she is hoping voters “have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”

In late 2021, Platner showed up at her Maine home uninvited and let himself into her unlocked house. He was”almost blackout drunk,” and began “grabbing” Racicot’s “pelvis and being really forceful,” and noticed a “look on his face” before “realizing … I am in a situation where there’s no consent here,” she recounted.

“I had been telling him these words, like: ‘No, don’t,’” she added to the outlet, noting that he was “very drunk and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice,’” she also said.

“Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue,” Platner responded in a statement.

In a subsequent video statement, he added: “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.”

Racicot and Platner dated on and off for two years between 2019 and 2021 after meeting on the dating app Bumble. She cut off contact with Platner and allegedly sent him an Instagram message claiming the 2021 incident was not consensual, but has since deleted her account and said she couldn’t recover the message, per Politico.

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Platner visited DC last month before the The Pine Tree State’s primary election and stressed in a private meeting with Democratic senators that no credible allegations of sexual assault would be coming to light.

The Senate hopeful has also been dogged by allegations of sexting six other women while married, which he and his campaign acknowledged. 

Until recently, Platner also maintained an active account on the private messaging app Kik, which is known as a hotbed for hookups, and displayed a picture on the profile of himself shirtless in a white towel.

That’s on top of stories last year about Platner making offensive comments on Reddit and getting a tattoo of a notorious Nazi SS symbol that he later replaced.

Two of his ex-girlfriends — one of whom worked for a Republican think tank and the other of whom identifies as a “leftist” — have said Platner lied about not knowing the origins of the skull-and-bones “Totenkopf” when first asked about the symbol on his chest last year.

Platner also had the tattoo replaced with the image of a Celtic knot in the shape of a dog.

A recent Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena College survey showed Platner leading Collins 49% to 47%, though 3% said they didn’t know whom they would support or declined to answer.

But just 44% said Platner had “good character,” whereas 66% of those surveyed shared that sentiment about Collins. Similarly, 45% said the Democrat “has the right kind of moral values,” compared with 61% who said that about Collins.

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic leaders have still backed him in the challenge against Collins — one of three key races where the GOP is working to maintain its Senate majority.

“I am going to do everything I can to make sure that Graham Platner is the next senator from the state of Maine,” Sanders said in an interview with CBS News’ Robert Costa in June. “There are people in the United States Senate who are not saints, I can tell you that.”

The Vermont independent endorsed the 41-year-old Senate candidate due to his support of policies in favor of single-payer health care and hiking taxes for billionaires

“We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate,” Schumer also told reporters in early June, affirming his endorsement of Platner — despite having backed term-limited Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills beforehand.

“It is not a coincidence that this story comes a week before the ballot deadline, just as the previous false allegations came a week before the primary,” the Platner campaign said in a statement to Politico.

“Graham began this campaign to fight for a Maine where everyone is treated with dignity and where Mainers are put first, and no amount of desperate smears will stop this movement from seeing that vision through.”

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