A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.
The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office.
Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.
“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”
Yeah I really wanted to believe that Platner was better than he seemed.
I’m sad to have my expectations met :(
He was a “military history buff” who had no idea what a totenkopf was but miraculously had one on his chest for decades. And he joined fucking Blackwater as a merc. The only thing he had going for him was he said a few good things about health insurance. Oh, and he had no political history at all so there was no track record of him doing anything other than “being an oyster farmer” with his family money.
So many of us were pointing out he was an even shittier version of fetterman (who also had massive red flags everyone chose to ignore). None of this is a surprise.
People supported Platner despite his red flags because he’s an outsider. Which as you already pointed out, it’s exactly how Fetterman got in. There are plenty of candidates who got in who lived a regular life. Plenty of people don’t have pasts as sordid as this guy. I can’t imagine running at all knowing he has so many skeletons.
What is especially frustrating is that one of the other people in the primary basically had a very similar platform AND was also a military vet. But she was a she so of course the podcast bros didn’t care.
I get that this is maine so “drain the swamp” probably WAS a smart play but… holy fuck there were so many red flags.
And he had a LOT of support from establishment Democrats since at least January of this year. Which is another thing he and other “outsiders” have in common, I guess.
No real winning outcome on this. A guy with a credible SA allegation doesn’t deserve to be a Senator, we don’t deserve another term of Susan Collins or a Republican majority in Congress. I just don’t think a replacement for Platner is beating Collins
He should have never been chosen to run against Collins. Everyone looked past the Nazi tattoo, the sexist and racist comments, and the other sexual assault allegations and now here we are.