Platner drops Senate bid, allowing Maine Democrats to tap replacement

The party has until July 27 to decide and reportedly plans to hold a convention

Maine Democrat Graham Platner with supporters (credit: Graham Platner Facebook)

Maine Democrat Graham Platner abandoned his bid for the Senate on Wednesday evening, two days after a former romantic partner, Jenny Racicot, accused him of raping her in 2021.

Platner once again denied the allegations but said he was “suspending” his campaign in an 11-minute video posted to X.

“I think as many of you know, over the past couple days, I have faced some very serious allegations, and I just want to make it clear: This is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It's not real,” he said.

“It's not the false allegations, though, that have brought us to where we are. It's the fact that they are being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us,” he continued.

However, he said he was “suspending campaign operations” and added, “I intend to file my paperwork to withdraw.”

“This is incredibly difficult because I know that some will think it's an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not,” he said. “We're not doing it because of the allegations. We're doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power.”

Top allies had called on Platner to quit the race and threatened to withhold their financial support if he did not.

Platner still has yet to file paperwork withdrawing his name, but if he drops out ahead of a critical Monday deadline, Maine law allows Democrats to choose a replacement to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

They’ll have until July 27 to decide, and they have great leeway in how they pick a substitute. The statute in question offers little guidance, saying only that a “political committee may make a replacement nomination for the general election” if a vacancy arises early enough, as is the case here.

Maine Democrats have such a committee: the party’s 113-member governing body, known as the Democratic State Committee, or DSC, whose members are elected across the state and intended to be representative of the party as a whole.

But the DSC does not plan to act on its own. Instead, the party said in a statement on Wednesday that the committee had voted to hold a “nominating convention” to select a candidate and promised more information about the details of that process “soon.”

Democrats plan to convene approximately 600 people, including “500 delegates elected proportionally by county committees, along with the entire state committee,” according to an unnamed source who spoke with the Bangor Daily News.

Many potential names have already been floated, and some would-be contenders have taken steps toward a bid. However, the extremely compressed timeframe and uncertain electorate make assembling a campaign—and handicapping the race—unusually difficult.

Whoever emerges from the process will have around 100 days to campaign against Collins, who reported having nearly $10 million in her coffers on May 20. Top super PACs on both sides have also been preparing for a costly race.

The pro-Democratic Senate Majority PAC said in February that it had reserved $24 million in fall TV time for Maine, while its GOP counterpart, the Senate Leadership Fund, responded in April by announcing $42 million in bookings.

This piece has been updated with additional details about the paperwork needed to withdraw as a candidate.