It wasn’t a wonder, however it used to be a bombshell.
On July 6, 2026, Politico printed the detailed account of a Maine lady who stated she have been sexually assaulted by means of Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner virtually 5 years in the past. Platner referred to as the allegation “categorically untrue,” then stated he used to be “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.”
Platner had won the fervent beef up of progressives in Maine and out of doors. However he have been dogged by means of accusations of, variously, racist, misogynist and cheating habits – he claimed to not have identified the which means of an SS tattoo on his chest. However his supporters remained at the back of him.
Quickly after the attack allegations gave the impression, the Platner marketing campaign used to be in hassle. His early political champion, Sen. Bernie Sanders, took an afternoon to echo what celebration officers and once-supportive social media stars had virtually instantly demanded: that Platner drop out of the marketing campaign. Via the night time of July 8, Platner had suspended his marketing campaign.
Politics and prison affairs editor Naomi Schalit spoke with political scientist Nicholas Jacobs, who has adopted the marketing campaign and talked with Platner at once in 2025.
An NPR host the day past opened an interview with a Maine reporter by means of looking at, “A lot going on in your little state.” Maine has two senators, similar to different states. Why is that this one of these high-profile race?
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I assumed once I moved to Maine in 2019 from Virginia, I used to be going to the quiet geographical region. Politics has been anything else however since then. Maine used to be destined to be within the nationwide highlight this yr as a result of Republican Sen. Susan Collins is up for reelection, working for her 6th consecutive time period in administrative center. Each and every time she is up for reelection, she is considered as a susceptible incumbent, if no longer probably the most susceptible incumbent, within the Republican Birthday party. So we had been destined to get quite a bit of outdoor cash and out of doors consideration sooner than the entire Platner tale even started.
Graham Platner and Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, sign up for fingers at an tournament in Orono, Maine, on Might 24, 2026.
AP Photograph/Robert F. Bukaty
Previously, applicants normally emerged from a pipeline – electoral revel in, vetting by means of the celebration. They didn’t emerge out of candidate recruitment by means of outsiders or celebration critics. However nationally we’re seeing that roughly rebel recruitment, together with with Platner. Is that this a brand new roughly politics?
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Political scientists had been excited about that query for rather a very long time. Way back to the early Seventies they began excited about how adjustments to the construction of those celebration organizations, particularly the foundations governing the nomination procedure, started to supply a unique form of candidate. The ones adjustments sat facet by means of facet with several types of applied sciences that I feel additionally larger the chance of a candidate-centered marketing campaign.
Now, you have to say we’re dwelling in an anti-establishment technology, which may imply that citizens at the proper and the left are extra disposed or much more likely to desire applicants who’re working towards the institution.
As peculiar as Graham Platner is, this taste of politics is more and more commonplace. In 2010, students had been changing into attuned to one thing referred to as the “invisible primary.” That’s the place numerous endorsements amongst celebration elites and pastime workforce activists, smartly sooner than citizens had any say in the main procedure, supposed those insiders had come to a few kind of consensus on who the candidate will have to be.
There’s a turn facet of that, which is reflected in Donald Trump in 2016 and in a few of these modern insurgencies of the previous couple of years. Would-be applicants themselves and activist organizations are ready to place ahead attainable contenders for nomination out of doors of that conventional gadget the place you’re employed your approach up via legislative administrative center. That’s obviously what took place with Platner.
In 2025, people related to the Bernie Sanders presidential marketing campaign – now kind of the Bernie Sanders system – got here as much as Maine searching for applicants. They discovered a man who did an advert towards some Norwegian salmon industrial fisheries, learned he used to be minimize directly from central casting, and that’s how we were given Graham Platner.
Is there a connection between Platner’s populism and why his deeply engaged supporters weren’t ready to seem previous his obtrusive issues?
Donald Trump, as a populist candidate, has been ready to let scandal after scandal simply roll off his shoulders. The left used to be very vital of Trump supporters forgiving him, to the level that even Trump himself famously says he can stand in the midst of 5th Street, shoot somebody and other folks will nonetheless beef up him.
There’s an equivalency with Platner, and a few of it has to do with a populist taste of politics. Platner and Trump actually excel, as all populists do, in defining who they’re towards, at figuring out the enemy, whether or not it’s immigrants, the deep state, the swamp, the oligarchy or the institution.
Each Platner and Trump have considered the nationwide media as an enemy. Each and every scandal, each and every assault, each and every complaint that’s levied on the chief of a populist motion turns out to vindicate their concept that there’s some higher pressure available in the market looking to take them down. The sexting scandal that broke a few month in the past, it used to be the Platner marketing campaign itself that stated this used to be a success process, a smear from The New York Instances.
There’s a sizable mass of people within the state, together with some elected Democrats, who view this newest set of allegations of sexual attack that Politico reported as a fabricated hit process from the Democratic institution.
If the critics are the enemy, then Maine’s Democratic Birthday party has a significant issue in the case of who will get to be the following candidate.
Now not each and every Democrat in Maine is experience or die with Platner, nor had been they when he did an excessively spectacular process in getting probably the most votes ever within the Democratic number one final month, after Gov. Janet Generators had suspended her marketing campaign.
The Generators marketing campaign actually by no means mobilized. Via early spring right here in Maine, when Generators attempted to struggle again, she ran one set of advertisements calling out some put up that Platner had written diminishing sexual attack, specifically within the army. The left within the state attacked her beautiful strongly, pronouncing, “You’re going to weaken our candidate. This isn’t right.”
The truth that numerous the ladies who had been featured within the advert had been Democratic Birthday party stalwarts roughly performed into this concept that it used to be the institution taking at the insurgency. A number of months later, it kind of feels they could have had some extent.
Are there courses from what took place with Platner?
The easy, shallow lesson is that this used to be simply dangerous marketing campaign technique.
Other people got here in and recruited Platner and simply didn’t do sufficient opposition analysis. So the following time that they arrive in and pull someone out of central casting, they simply would wish to rent higher legal professionals to dig up dust on their very own candidate.
However what’s problematic about that is one thing else.
I sat down with Platner in October 2025. I requested him, “Neatly, why are you dressed in the Scarlet D – for Democrat – round your neck? Why would you do this?
And he stated, “The one explanation why I’m doing it’s to get get right of entry to to Act Blue, so I will be able to carry cash.” Act Blue is the Democratic Birthday party’s major fundraising platform.
Editor’s observe: The Dialog has reached out to the Platner marketing campaign for a remark and can replace this tale if it receives one.
So you’ve this particular person who doesn’t wish to be a Democrat. He’s brazenly stated he’s no longer going to vote for the Democratic management. He’s an acolyte of Bernie Sanders, who additionally doesn’t wish to name himself a Democrat. What are such people ready to do? They’re ready to take over the Democratic Birthday party.
This is similar form of downside that we noticed in 2016: A person who by no means actually sought after to be a Republican, who used to be a Democrat for a lot of his lifestyles, bursts out at the scene and finally ends up taking up the Republican Birthday party.
So the deeper, longer-term downside is the hollowness of The united states’s arranged political celebration lifestyles. I am getting that there are only a few defenders of our two-party gadget, however our politics, our political gadget, our Charter handiest paintings with two wholesome, tough political events.
When they are able to be hijacked by means of outsiders, events aren’t ready to do the paintings of deciding on applicants, of establishing consensus, of doing the paintings of democratic persuasion. You could say it turns into a wholly other political recreation altogether.
This tale has been up to date to mirror Platner’s withdrawal from the Senate race.
