This story was produced as part of a partnership with NOTUS and the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
Maine Democrat Graham Platner on Wednesday suspended his campaign for Senate after a woman publicly accused him of sexual assault this week. His departure forces his party to scramble to find a replacement nominee for one of the nation’s tightest Senate races.
“For the movement to continue, it can’t be me. For that reason we are suspending campaign operations,” Platner said in an 11-minute video on X.
Platner’s decision to drop out of the race before a key July 13 deadline to withdraw gives his party a chance to reset and put forward a more viable candidate to run against incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November. The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to pick a replacement.
Collins is the only Republican senator running for reelection in a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024, making Maine key to Democrats’ hopes of securing a Senate majority next year.
During his announcement, Platner again denied the accusations, saying the “false allegations … are being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us.” He added that the current political system is built to “crush” progressive candidacies like his, and that the national level party would rather see Collins win than let Platner run a successful Senate campaign.
“The brutal political reality is they are going to take everything away from us,” Platner said. “We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function.”
Potential candidates to replace Platner include former state Senate President Troy Jackson, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, social worker Paige Loud and Nirav Shah, former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Others include former Senate candidates Dan Kleban and Jordan Wood, both of whom dropped out early in the Democratic primary race. Wood, instead, sought the party’s nomination in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from a rural area of Maine who could appeal to independent and Republican voters, emerged as a top choice of progressives. He’s ideologically aligned with Platner, regularly appearing with him on the campaign trail.
Jackson filed Federal Election Commission paperwork on Tuesday to form an exploratory committee for the race.
However, Maine Democrats may opt for a candidate with fewer ties to Platner to avoid Republican efforts to exploit possible connections to him.
Shah said Tuesday he has received calls from supporters urging him to enter the race, adding on X that “anyone running for this nomination should agree to at least one televised debate and hold multiple town halls.”
The Maine Democratic Party says it will hold a convention to select a new nominee and build on the momentum from Platner’s campaign.
“We look forward to coming together and harnessing that energy around our new nominee as we work to defeat Susan Collins in November,” the party said in a statement.
Platner echoed the calls for an “open, transparent and democratic” process to choose his replacement.
Platner battled a series of controversies since launching his campaign last August, including allegations from former girlfriends of unsettling and physically threatening behavior, offensive social media posts he made years ago, and a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol that he got as a Marine nearly 20 years ago and recently had removed.
On Monday, a woman who previously dated Platner told Politico that he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago. She said that although she agreed with Platner politically, she came forward because of his previous public denials of being abusive toward women.
“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” the woman told Politico. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.'”
And on Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that another ex-girlfriend of Platner said he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex.
“He would pull condoms off,” she told the Post. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.”
