Ties to Graham Platner Could ‘Haunt’ a Replacement

Democrats are coming to realize Graham Platner will be a specter in Maine’s Senate race even if he ends his campaign.

Platner has denied the allegations of sexual assault and misconduct from former girlfriends that have ratcheted up pressure on him to drop his bid for the seat. Still, Democrats who anticipate he will be forced to end his run told NOTUS their party has a unique challenge: Democrats need a replacement candidate who is distant enough from Platner to avoid his toxicity, but not so far from his politics that they would undermine the Democratic primary voters who nominated Platner.

Given that this is playing out in one of the most competitive Senate contests in the country, any ties to Platner could become an issue for a potential alternative candidate — and the rest of the Democratic Party, they said.

“If someone has come out there and really defended him up till this point, I could see those words coming back to haunt them,” said a former state party official. “If they defended him very publicly at other points during the emergence of some of his controversies, that type of stuff probably will have a bit of a legacy, because the other side will make sure that those types of quotes don’t go away.”

“People who have come to his defense are more at risk now,” the former party official added. “Pretty simple politics.”

Platner denied wrongdoing on Monday after Politico first reported ex-girlfriend Jenny Racicot’s account of Platner allegedly forcing her to have sex with him. He also announced he would “reflect on the best path forward” for his campaign. On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported allegations from another ex-girlfriend that he removed condoms without her consent during sex. The Post reported that Platner also denied those allegations and called them “politically motivated.”

The New York Times reported that Platner expressed confidence to his staff Monday night that he had the influence to select his successor, should he drop out.

The Platner campaign did not respond to a request for comment from NOTUS.

Just the idea that he would try to have a hand in a replacement was enough to prompt criticism.

“That person will be dead in the water with the general electorate from the beginning,” state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who lost his Democratic primary in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District last month, told NOTUS. He posted on social media that connections to Platner would “doom” any candidate.

“Somebody has to show themselves to be independent-minded and to really work in a fresh direction to unite the party,” he added. (Baldacci told NOTUS he wasn’t interested in running.)

On Tuesday, the state party — which had previously sent a memo to its state committee’s members saying the process to find a replacement would be “open, inclusive, transparent, and fair” — said Platner was trying to influence the replacement process.

“Unfortunately Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like,” Devon Murphy-Anderson, the state party’s executive director, said in a video. “We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.”

As the new allegations began coming to light this week, Democrats quickly began floating possible candidates to run against Sen. Susan Collins, a formidable five-term Republican incumbent.

Most of them supported Platner before they called for him to step down.

“He’s looming large over what this looks like right now,” said a Democratic strategist working with a potential replacement candidate. “There’s a real danger to be seen as being Graham’s hand-picked successor, but I do think that there’s also a countervailing danger, like if they were to go for Janet Mills. That would be seen as a slap in the face of these people that did vote for Graham.”

Mills, the state’s governor, was recruited by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to run in the Senate primary, but her campaign never took off. She suspended it weeks before the primary, and as of Tuesday had not made any public statements about the latest allegations against Platner.

Among the possible alternatives are three Democrats who lost the gubernatorial primary: the former director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Nirav Shah; Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows; and the former president of the state Senate, Troy Jackson.

Progressives are pushing for Jackson, who told the Bangor Daily News that he is interested in the seat and has already filed paperwork to create an exploratory committee for a Senate run. Platner and Jackson campaigned together, supported each other’s campaigns and both received endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). Sanders and Jackson have both called for Platner to withdraw.

Bellows also campaigned with Platner and has said he should step down. On Tuesday, she said in a statement reported by the Midcoast Villager newspaper that Platner “must withdraw from the US Senate race. And when he does, I will seriously consider entering this race.”

Shah has also said he is in conversations about “what comes next and evaluating whether I should enter the Senate race.”

Jackson, Bellows and Shah did not respond to requests for comment from NOTUS on how they expect Platner to continue to factor into the race for the eventual nominee if he drops out.

How Democrats respond to Platner — who even before the latest allegations faced criticism over his history of offensive online posts and a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol — could even complicate races outside of Maine.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) dinged her primary opponent Abdul El-Sayed for not explicitly calling on Platner to exit the race. He wrote on X, “Voters in Maine deserve a choice for US Senate that doesn’t force them to make a moral compromise between sexual violence or corporate servitude.”

She replied to his post: “Abdul are you having trouble stringing these two sentences together? I believe women. Graham Platner should drop out.”

The former Maine state party official said Democrats who defended Platner for other controversies now put their potential bid to replace him at greater risk. But the former official didn’t write off their chances of beating Collins.

“The focus of a lot of people in Maine is to have a Democratic Senate and to defeat Susan Collins,” they said. “And that will become the primary point of the campaign at some point as Platner gets further and further behind us.”