Sex assault scandal prompts Maine's Graham Platner to exit US Senate race 

(CN) — In the wake of sexual assault accusations surfacing against Graham Platner, the U.S. Senate candidate from Maine dropped out of the race Wednesday.

Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran, faced mounting calls to withdraw from the key race — Democrats hope to flip incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins’ seat to blue — after Politico published a Maine woman’s account that Platner forced himself on her while nearly “blackout drunk” despite her repeated protests.

In an 11-minute video posted Wednesday evening, Platner continued to deny the allegations. He laid the blame on his political opponents and a claimed that “a corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury and executioner.”

“They are going to take everything away from us. Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign,” he told supporters. “They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine.”

Rather than withdraw from the race outright, Platner said he was “suspending campaign operations” and called for a fair process to replace him as the Democratic nominee.

“My name might be on the ballot right now, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine,” he said.

Jenny Racicot, 41, said she and Platner dated on and off for more than two years before he entered her home uninvited in late 2021 and raped her. She described Platner’s behavior as “reckless” and “unsettling” in a New York Times story published last month, but said she faced a “huge moral conflict” about coming forward because she supported his progressive platform.

After the article came out, per Politico, Racicot “connected” with Democratic attorney Cheyenne Hunt, who founded a nonprofit this year called Reckoning Action. The group’s website says it “exists to confront misogyny and gender bias in American public life” and it previously supported women whose sexual assault accusations against former U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell of California led to his resignation and withdrawal from the state gubernatorial primary. Hunt also connected Politico to Racicot, the outlet noted.

Racicot said she chose to tell her full story after seeing Platner’s supporters disregard accusations in The Times of abusive behavior and disturbing comments about women and rape as politically motivated.

“I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person,” Racicot told Politico.

Platner first denied the accusations in a video posted to social media Monday, shortly after the Politico story went live. “Any account of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false,” he said.

The recent accusations against Platner weren’t the first news items to stir controversy over the combat veteran, whose progressive platform includes raising the federal minimum wage, implementing universal healthcare coverage and ending U.S. funding for Israel’s bombing of Gaza. This past October, Platner announced he’d covered up a tattoo on his chest of a skull-and-crossbones image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.

Platner said he got the tattoo in 2007 during a night of drinking in Croatia, while on leave from the Marine Corps, and was unaware that the symbol was associated with Nazi police.

In May, a former campaign staffer revealed that Platner had sent sexually explicit text messages to several women while married. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, dubbed the story “gossip” and said it was “shameful” media outlets reported on it.

While Platner dismissed the reports as false, Gertner said the disclosure by a campaign aide was a betrayal that “deeply hurt.”

“I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind," Gertner wrote in a statement last month.

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