told The New York Times<\/a> this spring about a 2021 incident in which she said he arrived at her house drunk after she had asked him not to come over. At the time, she declined to share further details of that encounter on the record, but she said she found his behavior \u201creckless\u201d and \u201cunsettling,\u201d and cut off contact soon after that episode.<\/p>\nBut in a new interview published in Politico on Monday, Ms. Racicot elaborated on her recollection of that night, saying Mr. Platner let himself into her home, climbed on top of her and kept grabbing her \u2014 even after she repeatedly told him to stop. He ignored her protests and followed her into the bedroom, where, she said, he had sex with her against her will.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had been telling him these words, like: \u2018No, don\u2019t,\u2019\u201d she told Politico.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, the look on his face and realizing what was happening, I just realized that, like, I am in a situation where there\u2019s no consent here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Later, on CNN, Jake Tapper asked Ms. Racicot: \u201cDid Graham Platner rape you?\u201d<\/p>\n
She responded: \u201cBy definition, yes, absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Racicot did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Mr. Platner called the allegations \u201ctroubling, serious, and false,\u201d in the direct-to-camera video.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His statement came shortly after he had postponed several campaign events.<\/p>\n
Senator Collins, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable incumbent Republicans in the Senate, said in a statement that the \u201callegations are appalling.\u201d But she added that \u201cit is not up to me to choose the Democratic nominee for Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several local and national elected officials withdrew their support of Mr. Platner on Monday.<\/p>\n
State Senator Mattie Daughtry, a Democrat and the president of the Maine Senate, said in a statement that Mr. Platner should exit the race, describing the allegations against him over the last month as \u201cserious\u201d and saying that \u201csexual violence has absolutely no place in our society, and it cannot be tolerated from those seeking our highest positions of power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat of Arizona, said in a social media post that he was rescinding his endorsement of Mr. Platner, calling the allegations against him \u201ctroubling and deeply serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
End Citizens United, an organization that seeks to reduce the role of big money in politics, withdrew its endorsement and called for him to quit his campaign. \u201cThe allegations reported today are profoundly disturbing and disqualifying,\u201d said Tiffany Muller, the organization\u2019s president.<\/p>\n
And Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, suggested in a social media post that it was time for Mr. Platner to end his campaign. \u201cSure, take the rest of the day and night,\u201d she wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cTomorrow, we need a plan and Mr. Platner can step aside and focus on his family and well-being.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for Senate from Maine, said he was taking time to \u201creflect\u201d on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,82364,89518,5315,9,24,63,95540,855,82365],"class_list":["post-288703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-collins","tag-graham","tag-maine","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-platner","tag-senate","tag-susan-m"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}