Platner suspends Maine Senate bid after scandal-ridden campaign collapse

Graham Platner suspended his Maine Senate campaign Wednesday night and said he intended to remove his name from the ballot, ending a bid that had briefly electrified progressives and then unraveled under pressure from scandal and internal party revolt. The oyster farmer and Marine veteran had won the June 9 Democratic primary with more than 70% of the vote, defeating Gov. Janet Mills after she had already suspended her own Senate campaign.

Platner’s collapse hit a race that Democrats had seen as one of their best chances to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins and reshape control of the U.S. Senate. Early in the campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was among the prominent progressive voices backing Platner, helping make him a symbol of the party’s insurgent wing before the operation around him began to come apart.

The tipping point came July 6, when Politico detailed a sexual assault allegation from former girlfriend Jenny Racicot, who said Platner forced sex on her in 2021 after she told him to stop. Platner denied the allegation and called it false. The same day, Maine Democratic Party leaders and national Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, called on him to step aside. By July 7, his campaign had canceled upcoming fundraisers and paused some online ads, a sign that the operation was entering triage mode as donors and allies pulled back.

Platner’s suspension left Maine Democrats with a compressed replacement problem in a state where election rules set July 13 as the withdrawal deadline for a party to replace a general-election candidate and July 27 as the deadline for replacement nominations. That timeline gave party officials less than three weeks to settle on a new nominee against Collins, while also managing the fallout from a campaign that had moved from insurgent momentum to damage control in a matter of days.

The party’s scramble only intensified after reports on July 8 said the Maine Democratic Party accused Platner’s team of trying to influence the replacement process before he formally withdrew. The dispute underscored how thoroughly the campaign had broken down around operations, discipline and trust, leaving Democrats to salvage a Senate race they had expected to fight on their strongest terrain.