The Rise and Fall of Graham Platner

The rise and fall of Graham Platner, who has just withdrawn from the U.S. Senate race in Maine in which he was challenging Republican incumbent Susan Collins, makes one think of a fairy tale or myth in which a character of humble status is suddenly elevated to wealth and high status by some magical entity but is led astray by character flaws such as greed or hubris and is just as precipitously hurled back into lowly obscurity. In Graham’s case, the magical entities were progressive political operatives Dan Moraff, Leanne Fan and Moritz Katz, who thought they had found the Great White Male: A 41-year-old oyster farmer and Marine veteran  whose combination of left-wing ideas and macho charisma would finally help the Democrats connect with working-class voters. In a political season favourable to the left, Platner became a rising star in the Democratic Party, with some predicting that he was a plausible and perhaps even likely Democratic presidential nominee in 2028. He easily won the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat after his main rival, 78-year-old Maine governor Janet Mills, suspended her campaign.

But Platner’s own campaign was plagued with multiple problems and controversies, mostly related to ghosts from the past: struggles with alcoholism, inflammatory social media posts, a skull-and-bones tattoo associated with Nazi Germany (the “Totenkopf”), and finally increasingly troubling allegations of mistreating women. In June, the New York Times published accounts by three women who had dated Graham in the past and mentioned troubling experiences. One, Lyndsey Fifield, described low-level physical abuse: being grabbed by the shoulders, yanked by the wrist and, on one occasion,  having her arm twisted behind her back and being shoved into a bedroom where Platner allegedly kept her trapped. However, the Times said that it “could not independently corroborate Ms. Fifield’s account of the altercations,” and Platner’s supporters were quick to seize on the fact that the story identified her as a conservative activist. CNN did report that several of Fifield’s friends confirmed that she had talked to them about experiencing physical abuse at Platner’s hands long before he ran for office. But Platner hung on—even while rumours swirled of a still-to-be-disclosed sexual assault allegation.

That allegation dropped on 6 July when Politico published a troubling account by 41-year-old rural Maine resident Jenny Racicot, who had had a two-year casual sexual relationship with Graham. Racicot was featured in the earlier Times story, but was quoted only about “reckless” and “unsettling” behaviour; she apparently spoke to the Times reporters about the alleged assault, but only off the record. In the Politico interview, she described an alleged incident in late 2021 in which he came over to her house uninvited while drunk, let himself in, and forced himself on her even though she begged him to stop. 

While Racicot said she had deleted the messages in which she allegedly confronted Graham, as well as the ones leading up to his unwanted visit, some corroboration was provided by a man she dated later in 2023, as well as by messages she exchanged the same year with an acquaintance warning her not to get involved with Platner (and strongly implying that something nonconsensual had happened between them). After this, Graham quickly became radioactive: Democrats who had endorsed him began to withdraw those endorsements and urge him to drop out. Now he’s out, after a defiant video statement denying the allegations and darkly suggesting that they were the result of a conspiracy to get him off the ballot.

Now, questions abound. Is Platner an inspiring candidate undone by his own troubled past, or even by a coordinated political hit—or an egotistical demagogue luckily stopped in his tracks?  Is his political defenestration a model of how a party should police misconduct in its own ranks, or a scary example of how a mere accusation can destroy a career in a #BelieveWomen climate?