Graham Platner withdrew from Maine’s US Senate race on Friday afternoon and filed paperwork to remove his name from the November ballot, ending a campaign that had already been battered by scandal. The move came after Platner publicly said two days earlier that he planned to exit the race.
The withdrawal matters now because Democrats in Maine have only days to settle on a replacement nominee before the 27 July deadline for November’s ballots. Platner was the Democratic nominee in a race against Susan Collins, a five-term Republican incumbent, in a state Democrats see as essential to taking control of the US Senate.
Platner had said in an 11-minute video posted on Wednesday that the sexual assault allegations against him were false. He said the Democratic establishment was using the accusations to take away the tools he needed to run, adding, “This is all false” and “The things that have been claimed did not happen. It’s not real.” He also said, “People are desperate for change. For this broken system to be righted. For the American experiment to be furthered,” and insisted that “My name may have been on the ballot, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine.”
That denial did not stop the pressure from building. Platner also faced resurfaced old social media posts that included racist, sexist and homophobic language, and questions about a since-removed tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi emblem. He said the old posts were connected to struggles with PTSD, but the pileup of controversies left his campaign increasingly untenable as the party tried to hold together a race it had expected to fight hard through November.
The search for what comes next is already under way. Several contenders had begun jockeying for the nomination after Platner’s exit, including Troy Jackson, Shenna Bellows and Nirav Shah. Devon Murphy-Anderson said Platner’s decision was the right one, and said the allegations against him were very real and very credible. Democrats are now trying to organize a nominating convention before the deadline, and the unanswered question is not whether the party must move quickly, but which name it will put forward in time.
