No, the Graham Platner Allegations Are Not Politically Motivated

This is a story about the trauma of sexual assault

Photo of Graham Platner by Hannah Yoest for the Bulwark under a Creative Commons license

There are still people defending Graham Platner, although not many. Most of them are named Graham Platner.

His former supporters have told him to please immediately leave Maine’s midterm U.S. Senate election. The world, after all, has had enough of 73-year old Susan Collins, and he has become a stain upon the effort to dethrone her as Maine’s forever Senator.

Trigger Warning: Obviously, this story contains discussions of rape.

There are also a few voices (one is too many) claiming that Jenny Racicot’s rape accusations against Platner were politically motivated. That would be pretty weird for someone who agreed with his policy positions to do.

If a set of allegations were coming from the Republican operative, Lyndsey Fifield, who made some other accusations against him, I could see why people might hesitate, if only briefly, enough to dig a little deeper. But if Ms. Fifield’s story bore the characteristics of Ms. Racicot’s, that hesitation would die, too.

Buried in the news cycle is this key part of a story CNN released when it interviewed Ms. Racicot:

CNN spoke with two people close to Racicot who she previously told about the incident. One, a then-boyfriend who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said that Racicot opened up to him about the assault when she had trouble with intimacy after about ten months of dating in 2023. It was clear that something had happened to her, he explained, adding that she told him a previous partner “didn’t take no for an answer” and had sex with her non-consensually.

“She didn’t say the word rape,” the then-boyfriend explained, rather describing the encounter to him as a sexual assault. “I think the only reason she didn’t use the word rape is because I think she felt weird because she was kind of dating [him]. If all that went down on a first date, I bet she would have called it rape,” he told CNN.

CNN reviewed a text thread from 2023 between Racicot and her then-boyfriend where he wrote “I know you were assaulted” in a message.

CNN sort of buried the lede in their story. An ex-boyfriend came to her side. There is substantial evidence that she reported the rape long before Platner became a political trendline.

Ms. Racicot herself seemed hesitant to make the accusations. You’ll find out why she finally did later in this short post.

Anyone who has experienced sexual assault understands her hesitation.

For those of you not familiar with the allegations, the TL;DR version of Ms. Racicot’s description of the events is that Platner came to her house dead drunk, raped her, then fell asleep.

CNN had to press her on the “rape” word. Because that’s the word survivors have so much trouble saying out loud. If you haven’t been raped, you might question why that is, but nobody who has been raped questions it. The hesitation comes from deep in the soul. It comes from a wound that never heals, no matter how much therapy, anger management, or drugs and alcohol are applied. It is a gash that bleeds forever, even when time reduces it to a slow, festering sore that occasionally opens up by a trigger, one that can surprise and startle even the mostly healed.

Her interviewer, Jake Tapper, asked if she now considered the incident a rape. Ms. Racicot said, “By definition yes, absolutely yes.”

According to the same CNN article, Platner has stated that he doesn’t remember that night. Yet he still claimed that the allegations are false after the megastory hit everyone’s newsfeed.

“Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false,” he said in a video statement.

How can an event you participated in but don’t remember be categorically false? If you remember nothing of a night, then anything said about that night can be true.

Dismissing an accuser’s accusations by instinct is predatory behavior.

I suspect that by the time I hit the “publish” button for this Substack, he will have quit the Maine Senate race, an important race for Democrats to win if they’re to retake the Senate.

After he quits, though, there are still important lessons. The biggest one I can think of is that we (men, especially) hold those red flags up higher when we see them.

Not too long ago, I wrote a Substack post about Platner that defended him, especially his Totenkopf, which is a common tattoo within the U.S. military.

Platner himself said that he had a severe drinking problem. So, number one, perhaps that should be a disqualifier. We’ve seen what active, rampaging drunks like Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth are doing. I’m a strong believer in recovery of all kinds. That doesn’t mean we should accept a past like his from a sitting Senator. Especially when the drunkenness only abated a few years ago.

Here’s where my mea culpa really comes into play, though. It’s called ignoring obvious warning signs. In my first article about Platner, I wrote:

Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, who said she dated him casually off and on between 2019 and 2021, said the posts deepened her belief that he did not respect women. “When I saw the old comments that he made online,” she said, “I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.”

Instead of saying, “Whoa, stop right there, get me off this Platner train,” I did what too many of us do when we see questionable behavior from someone on our side of the political fence. I shrugged my shoulders and told myself that his alleged recovery from drinking had cured him.

Democrats are not like Republicans. Most modern Republicans would still be coming to Platner’s defense if he were on their side. His behavior towards women is a feature, not a bug. Democrats, however, are, rightly, throwing Platner to the curb.

I’m willing to admit to some desperation. The nightmare we are living under needs to end, but not at all costs. When I saw that the only report of any physical altercations involved a Republican operative, I suspected foul play by Republicans.

But Ms. Racicot's statement should have informed the survivor in me. Let’s again review what she said several months ago:

“When I saw the old comments that he made online,” she said, “I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.”

She was referring to numerous misogynistic quotes on his Reddit account. The red flags were there. I ignored them. Am I really that desperate to see MAGA defeated?

We all know how this stuff goes, too. The Republican operative, Ms. Fifield, said, “his offensive online posts reminded me of just how much he hated women.”

It won’t surprise anyone if she also has a more gruesome tale. Hopefully, she won’t need to tell it, since she clearly doesn’t want to. Hopefully, by the time you read this, Platner will have quit the race.

I’ll repeat my mea culpa: I dismissed a woman who said she was a Republican operative. Who also said he hated women. Why wasn’t my thinking aligned like this corrected line instead?

A Republican operative. Who also said he hated women

I take a tiny dash of comfort knowing that even Ms. Racicot hesitated at first. Per the CNN article:

“I really agree with his politics. I think we need someone with those political stances,” she said, adding that her shared political views were one reason she didn’t come forward sooner.

Then, she talked to Cheyenne Hunt, a Democratic-leaning social media maven who has helped expose sexual assault by other politicians, including former Democratic House Representative Eric Swalwell in a series of revelations that sent his political career into a permanent death spiral.

Ms. Racicot explained:

Racicot said Hunt provided a support network for sexual assault survivors that made her comfortable with publicly sharing her story.

“I’m getting the support now that I needed all along,” Racicot said.

This will sound familiar to anyone who has climbed the switchback known as sexual assault survival, where names and the word “rape” often become the last utterances from a survivor’s lips.

Now that the allegations have expanded and include support via statements made to Ms. Racicot’s friends before anyone knew who Graham Platner was, there can be no doubt about his future. He’ll return to oyster farming where he belongs. If we’re extra lucky, he’ll run into a hungry orca while pulling in a net.

Maine Democrats, who never seem to have a coherent strategy, will need to figure out a way to pick up the pieces and find another candidate. And do so in a hurry.

And, speaking merely for myself, I need to remember to hoist those red flags a little higher next time I see stories like Platner’s emerge from the cesspool of American politics.

Sources for this story

CNN report on Platner interview

Gordon, Allison, and Jake Tapper. “Woman Alleges Graham Platner Raped Her in 2021 While They Were Dating, Which He Denies.” CNN, July 6, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/06/us/graham-platner-racicot-allegation-maine-invs.

This outlines Platner’s specific positions (for reference):

U.S. Senate — Democratic Primary | Voter Guide: 2026 Primary Election * Maine
From Maine Morning Star | Policy and Politics for the Pine Tree Statemainemorningstar.com

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