Dems Shocked — Shocked! — That Graham Platner Is Bad
The party could tolerate a Nazi tattoo and a history of drunken misogyny as long as a socialist had a shot at a Senate seat, but allegations of sexual assault are a bridge too far.
“I am not shocked that Demos continued to endorse their badly flawed Maine candidate, Graham Platner,” opined our Mark Alexander yesterday. “I am shocked that the Demos may have found the limit of their hypocrisy.” Indeed, it seems that #MeToo has come for yet another Democrat.
“Maybe there are Nazis everywhere,” I rhetorically wondered when introducing Platner last fall. The Democrat Senate candidate from Maine is most famous, of course, for the large Nazi tattoo on his chest, which he dubiously claimed he didn’t know was a Nazi tattoo. Worse than his National Socialist body ink are his Democratic Socialist policy preferences, but he still became the Maine man, winning the Democrats’ Senate primary in April. National Democrats lined up to endorse him.
Yet it’s not exactly shocking that a guy with a Nazi tattoo made other poor life choices.
Stories cropped up about misogynistic comments he made online. A story surfaced about his sexting with women despite being married. Then came a New York Times exposé about two women who dated him and experienced unwanted sexual advances. Most of that story focused on Lyndsey Fifield, possibly because she was a Republican and the Believe All Women™ Democrats could more easily dismiss her complaints.
Well, yesterday’s big revelation came from a Politico exclusive relaying the story of “a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot” who says Platner sexually assaulted her — he entered her home after she told him not to and then forcibly had drunken sexual intercourse with her over her repeated objections — several years ago.
“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” Racicot said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”
“I had been telling him these words, like: ‘No, don’t,’” she recalled. “And, the look on his face and realizing what was happening, I just realized that, like, I am in a situation where there’s no consent here.”
If Racicot’s name sounds familiar, that’s because she’s the other woman profiled in The New York Times in June. Politico says Racicot relayed part of her story to the Times, but “she didn’t go public with the specific assault claim because she didn’t want to be known as a rape victim.”
Racicot herself said that’s because she’s ideologically aligned with the Nazi. “One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”
Platner obviously knew Politico’s report was coming — he canceled several events this past weekend before the outlet broke the story on Monday. He denies that anything nonconsensual happened, of course, but he paused to see whether other Democrats would dutifully circle the wagons. “Regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting but mindful of the political reality it will inflict,” he said in a video posted on social media, “we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
The “best path forward” is right back to his pseudo-oyster farm, which I expect Platner will announce very soon, maybe today.
As Alexander outlined in May, Democrats have had a disturbing Platner problem for eight months. Only now, however, are they throwing him under the bus.
“I’ve seen this movie before,” joked Erick Erickson. “The Nazi drops out after everyone has admitted he’s a Nazi and the people who supported the Nazi pretend they never supported him.”
Maine Democrats demanded that he withdraw so the party could “refocus” the race on “the struggle against” President Donald Trump’s government. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, announced, “The DSCC will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.” Steadfast ally Ro Khanna, a Democrat representative from California, declared that “sexual assault or violence against women is a red line” and withdrew his endorsement.
Even Elizabeth Warren has decided maybe this isn’t what she meant by calling him “the fighter we need.” She now says, “There can be no tolerance for sexual assault. With so much at stake, the best path forward is for Graham Platner to step aside as the Democratic nominee and address these serious allegations outside this Senate race.”
Bernie Sanders has not yet commented.
As for Republican Senator Susan Collins, she called the allegations “appalling,” but she wryly noted, “It is not up to me to choose the Democratic nominee for Senate.”
Speaking of that, what now? According to CBS News, “Under Maine election law, nominees can be replaced if they withdraw by 5 p.m. on the second Monday in July.” That’s six days from now. Maine Democrat Party officials would have until July 27 to gather in one of those smoke-filled rooms to determine a replacement — without a primary, just like happened with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Democracy! High fives all around.
As I was pondering this morning how Democrats managed to find themselves in this predicament, it occurred to me that politicians all too often are not really very good people. The trappings of modern office incentivize self-promoters to claw their way to the top, and self-promoters often have questionable histories that they’re all too happy to overlook and hope you do too. When considering political options, another Nate — political statistician and analyst Nate Silver — put it this way: “Don’t invest your political capital in sketchy people.”
Indeed, maybe Democrats should have worked a little harder to understand what the oyster net was dredging up off the Maine seafloor. And maybe, just maybe, if you’re a guy seeking the Senate nomination from the MeToo party, you should stop and think if any woman has ever told you to never contact her again because you raped her. If the answer is yes, maybe sit this one out.
