\n<\/p>\n
The progressive senator Bernie Sanders has called on Graham Platner to withdraw from the US Senate race in Maine, citing \u201cvery serious allegations\u201d of sexual assault.<\/p>\n
While Platner has denied the claim, first reported by Politico, a growing list of Democrats have urged him to stand aside as the party\u2019s candidate. He has said he is \u201ctaking the time to reflect on the best path forward\u201d in the wake of the story.<\/p>\n
Sanders, one of Platner\u2019s earliest and most influential supporters, is the latest to call on him to withdraw.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have spoken with Graham Platner about the best path forward for Maine,\u201d said Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont. \u201cIn light of these very serious allegations, I have recommended that he step aside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier on Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani, New York City\u2019s mayor and another high-profile figure on the progressive wing of the Democratic party, said the \u201conly appropriate response\u201d in the accusation against Platner was to end his campaign. \u201cI believe that it\u2019s time for him to drop out of the race,\u201d Mamdani told reporters.<\/p>\n
In the Politico report, published on Monday, Jenny Racicot, 41, who previously dated Platner, said he forced her to have sex despite repeated objections. Platner denied her claims in a statement to Politico.<\/p>\n
Institutional support collapsed rapidly, however. Chuck Schumer, the US Senate minority leader, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the party\u2019s Senate campaign arm, called for Platner\u2019s withdrawal and said the committee would not fund his campaign if he stayed on the ballot.<\/p>\n
Maine\u2019s state party leadership has also urged him to step down. Senator Elizabeth Warren, previously a vocal backer, asked him to withdraw, while Ruben Gallego and Ro Khanna, the senator and representative who had both campaigned with Platner, also rescinded their endorsements.<\/p>\n
Platner, 41, entered the race last August virtually unknown: a Marine Corps combat veteran turned Maine oyster farmer whose viral, anti-establishment campaign overtook state governor Janet Mills \u2013 the party establishment\u2019s preferred candidate \u2013 before she withdrew.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter | Around 2-3 times a day<\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News US<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n He went on to win the primary by the largest margin in state history, making Maine one of the Democrats\u2019 best hopes of flipping a Senate seat this cycle.<\/p>\n The race is seen as a crucial chance for Democrats to pick up a US Senate seat, as the party vies to regain control of the upper chamber in Congress. The Maine seat is currently held by the five\u2011term Republican Susan Collins.<\/p>\n In order for Democrats to finalize an alternative Senate nominee in Maine, Platner needs to end his campaign by Monday 13 July at 5pm ET, according to state law. This would grant Democrats a two-week window \u2013 until 5pm ET on Monday 27 July \u2013 to pick a replacement to be on the ballot for November\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The progressive senator Bernie Sanders has called on Graham Platner to withdraw from the US Senate race in Maine, citing \u201cvery serious allegations\u201d of sexual assault. While Platner has denied the claim, first reported by Politico, a growing list of Democrats have urged him to stand aside as the party\u2019s candidate. He has said he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10666],"tags":[642,24068,558,1494,5516,46,23817,790,6730,887,4830,1359],"class_list":["post-34026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reparations","tag-assault","tag-bernie","tag-calls","tag-claims","tag-graham","tag-news","tag-platner","tag-race","tag-sanders","tag-senate","tag-sexual","tag-withdraw"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\/master\/3334.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=10c83f0d5beefcfefc4ed08f2054f5c9",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a48adf97ef6160bf8142106ba4817ba9c38abe9c\/206_0_3334_2667\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NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"The progressive senator Bernie Sanders has called on Graham Platner to withdraw from the US Senate race in Maine, citing \u201cvery serious allegations\u201d of sexual assault. While Platner has denied the claim, first reported by Politico, a growing list of Democrats have urged him to stand aside as the party\u2019s candidate. He has said he…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34028,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34026\/revisions\/34028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}