Graham Platner just relinquished his chance to become the next senator from Maine. But he may have won something even more valuable: an origin story.
On Wednesday evening, Graham Platner broadcast a video message from his deck. “We believe that for the movement to continue,” the self-described oysterman said after long pauses, “it can’t be me. And for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations.”
This was not an apology. Platner did not ask forgiveness for the litany of scandals that have been revealed about him since October. The latest and most serious arrived Monday, when Politico broke the news of a rape allegation by Platner’s ex-girlfriend, Jenny Racicot. She says Platner entered her home uninvited and heavily intoxicated and raped her. While Platner denies the allegation, he did not spend much time defending himself in his message on Wednesday. Instead, the candidate spent the vast majority of the 11-minute, 16-second video telling his supporters that they’d been robbed.
“The brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us,” he said with a steady anger. “Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign.” Specifically that meant the “ability to fundraise,” and his campaign’s access to voter data. Without these basic tools, no modern campaign can function.
