cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/62988948
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.’”
I’m not talking about the establishment: Hasan Piker. Emma Vigeland. Krystal Ball. Wajahat Ali. Ro Khanna. Abdul El-Sayed.
They’ve all publicly come out and said these allegations seem credible and that Platner must concede.
You were literally using the Maine Democratic party as your example, so I responded about how it’s not surprising that the establishment would call for a do over without all those pesky voters in the way.
As far as lefty endorsements, barely anyone in Maine even knows who any of those people are. They’re names that matter to a tiny sliver of political junkies who already have their own political beliefs and awareness of the larger state of politics.
I think if Hasan keeps on it he might be able to move the needle, but everyone else is basically electorally irrelevant. And it’s so much easier for him to just avoid talking about it so he doesn’t need to take a position on whether it’s better to have fascism than elevating a drunken rapist.
Nah, it’s curtains this time. Just watch.
You’re prolly right. Still if I was a “prediction market” guy I’d still bet on him squeaking by, going it alone, sans endorsements. The reason leftist politics works - that it’s based on material changes - can work for him. If we believe his base signed on for the material goods and not for how nice of a guy he is, could be likely to stay on for the goods. What other choice they got? Collins will give them nothing. A do-nothing-democrat replacement would give them nothing with a smile. It’s why I think if he powers on he may succeed. Then the rest of the Berniecrats would treat him like a stain but one that votes with them.
But again, you’re probably right.
One of his aides told the NYT:
Fortunately, there is such a candidate - Troy Jackson. Despite being sidelined by the media during the primary, he’s working class, a union guy, and a progressive. He has even been endorsed by the Maine chapter of the DSA:
The obvious move, then, would be for Platner to stand down and make way for Jackson to take up the cause.
Interesting!