Democratic Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner announced on X that he is suspending his Senate campaign and denies the sexual assault allegations against him. In a lengthy video message, Platner argued that “large forces” and the political establishment used the accusations to force him out.
The things that have been claimed did not happen. It’s not real. It has placed an immense amount of weight on me as I think about what needs to happen now.
Amy and I are regular people. We were not looking for this experience. We were not looking to get into politics.
We had no desire to run for office. I just want you to think about what you would do as a regular person in a position where a much larger world, large forces, were working against you personally to accuse you of the worst thing that a person could do. And it was not remotely true.
I learned about this through press inquiries with no time to truly respond. No time for investigations before a corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end.
I think it’s really important to understand why this is happening in the timeline. Why this is happening right now. Much like October when the first attack started.
Much like the news that was created the week before the primary. There is a reason that this is happening now. I only have until July 13th until I am officially the nominee.
This was the last week to try to get me off of the ballot. And that’s why this is occurring. It’s not the false allegations though that have brought us to where we are.
It’s the fact that they are being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us. We live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It is a system that is built structurally to make sure that movements like ours cannot flourish.
That if they begin to succeed, they can be crushed. What we have accomplished here, you made possible. The people of Maine.
The volunteers, the voters, the grassroots donors. And I have all the faith in the world that we could win if we could continue to harness that. But the brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us.
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. We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data.
We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function. Larger organizations, the national level party, the bigger donor networks, they have all committed to spending no money in this race if I’m in it. They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine.
What comes next needs to come from the people. Needs to come from the people of Maine. Needs to come from the voters who on June 9th at a strength of over 150,000, the largest number in the history of Maine primaries, said no to this kind of politics.
Voted for a politics that would actually represent them. Voted against the political system, against the donor class, against the entrenched forces. And I’m not asking for how this process is going to work.
I’m not trying to dictate to anyone who it should be or how we get there, but I will say this. It needs to be open, transparent, and democratic. It needs to be reflecting the will and the values of the people that built this movement, the people that showed up on June 9th.
People in D.C. need to stay in D.C. Decisions should not be made in back rooms by people in places of political power. Party apparatchiks are not the ones to make these decisions. These decisions need to be made in the open by the people of this state, the people who got us here.
This is exactly the kind of political system that everyone voted against on June 9th. And for that reason, we need to be assured that it is going to be open and democratic as we move forward. Amy and I struggled about getting into this.
Last summer, right around this time of year, we sat down and we looked at each other and we said, if we believe in the kind of politics we think that we do, we have to do this. Over the past couple days, really yesterday and today, we have had to have that exact same conversation. We believe that for the movement to continue, it can’t be made.
And for that reason, we are suspending campaign operations. This is incredibly difficult, because I know that some will think it’s an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not. We’re not doing it because of the allegations.
We’re doing it because of the structures that are being taken away from us by those in power. And I also feel an immense amount of responsibility to everyone who has worked so hard to get us to where we are. We went toe-to-toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the history of the world, and we won.
We beat them on June 9th in overwhelming numbers. We did it the right way. We built a campaign.
We engaged in electoral politics. We motivated people. We banded together.
We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change, and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it. Not if it’s me.
And so we’re suspending campaign operations. I want to make clear, though, I intend to file my paperwork to withdraw. The process needs to assure that what comes next is reflective of the Mainers, who on June 9th turned out and showed that they are desperate for a different kind of politics.
It needs to be driven not from back rooms, but by the will of the people. And the decisions that come next must come from that. All we were asking for was health care, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas.
We were asking for a fairer system We were asking for an end to the corruption, the end to the money in politics. We were asking for real democracy, and we did it the right way, and we won. But now the ball is in the court of the Democratic establishment.
My name might be on the ballot right now, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine. And on November 3rd, it needs to belong to the people of Maine. And the next Democratic senator for Maine needs to belong to the people of Maine.
They need to reflect the will and the values of the people of this state. I love this state. I love Maine.
And I love Mainers in ways that I can’t really describe. I’m immensely proud of what we have built. And I have the utmost faith that we will continue to build, and we will continue to move towards a better future.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank all of you. And keep fighting.
We’re going to win someday.
