▶ Watch Video: Maine Senate candidate on push to unseat Susan Collins, Platner replacement process
Graham Platner has formally filed the paperwork to suspend his campaign for U.S. Senate in Maine, with little time to go before the deadline.
The Maine Secretary of State’s Office confirmed receipt of Platner’s official withdrawal on Friday.
“Because the candidate officially withdrew before 5 p.m. of the 2nd Monday in July (July 13, 2026), his name will not appear on the ballot, and his political party may replace him,” the office said in a statement, noting that the deadline for the party to name a replacement candidate is July 27.
In his letter to the Maine secretary of state, which Platner posted to X on Friday, he wrote that he was formally withdrawing his candidacy for U.S. Senate.
“My name may have been on the ballot, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine. As such, please consider this notice as my official withdrawal from consideration for this office,” he wrote.
Platner announced the suspension of his campaign in an 11-minute social media video on Wednesday, after a woman accused him of sexual assault and the Democrats who supported him said he should step aside.
He vehemently denied the sexual assault allegations, calling them “false” and “not real,” but said the pressure from state-level and national Democrats had made it impossible for his campaign to continue. He blamed the “political establishment” for the situation.
Platner’s 11th-hour exit from the race has prompted hurried efforts from Democrats looking to replace him. The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 at 5 p.m. to select a replacement. The party said it would hold a nominating convention.
“Maine Statute does not address how a replacement candidate may be chosen by a party, only that the candidate filling the vacancy must be a ‘qualified person,'” the Maine Secretary of State’s Office said in its statement. “Announcements about how a replacement candidate will be chosen or when that candidate will be announced will come from the political party.”
The Senate race in Maine is one of the most closely watched races of this cycle, as Democrats seek to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a contest that could determine control of the Senate.
Platner had urged the Maine Democratic Party to use an “open, transparent and democratic” process to replace him, and said the decision shouldn’t be made by “party apparatchiks.”
A Maine woman, Jenny Racicot, told Politico and CNN that Platner entered her home without permission in late 2021 when he was drunk and forced himself on her, ignoring her demands for him to stop. Racicot said the two met on a dating app in 2019 and had a casual, consensual relationship before the night of the alleged assault.
Racicot told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Platner, “by dictionary definition, raped me.”
“He violated multiple layers of consent that night. By coming into my home when I asked him not to, and by advancing on me when I told him not to, and furthermore, another incident that I had told him not to do,” Racicot said, referring to his alleged refusal to use protection.
She said: “In that moment, I evaluated my safety. … I basically felt safest just complying.”
Platner called the allegations “categorically false” in a video shortly after Politico broke the story Monday, before Racicot’s CNN interview. In a statement, his campaign called the allegations “desperate smears” that were “coached and coordinated by out of state establishment operatives.”
In his video announcing the end of his campaign, Platner said he learned about the allegations 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,” he said.
“This was the last week to try to get me off of the ballot, and that’s why this is occurring,” he added.
The allegations led the Maine Democratic Party, along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who chairs Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, to call on Platner to withdraw earlier this week. The DSCC said it would not invest in the race if Platner remained on the ballot, and the Senate Majority PAC said in light of the allegations, it was redirecting resources away from the Maine Senate race, severely limiting his campaign’s viability going forward.
And a number of Platner’s highest-profile supporters in Congress — like Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona — also took back their endorsements shortly after the story became public.
On Tuesday, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said he spoke with Platner and “recommended that he step aside.” The statement carried significant weight, with Sanders having been a key supporter of Platner’s.
