Graham Platner, a scandal-plagued Democratic Senate nominee whose insurgent rise had drawn comparisons to Donald Trump, ended his campaign on Wednesday after a rape allegation threatened to derail one of his party\u2019s best chances of flipping a Republican-held seat.<\/p>\n
Platner, a Marine veteran, oysterman and political newcomer, won last month\u2019s Democratic primary in the northeastern state of Maine to face Republican Senator Susan Collins in November\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
His withdrawal gives Maine Democrats only days to regroup in a race central to the party\u2019s hopes of regaining control of the US Senate. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are suspending campaign operations,\u201d Platner said in a video posted on X. \u201cThis is incredibly difficult, because I know that some will think it\u2019s an admission of guilt, and it most certainly is not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI intend to file my paperwork to withdraw,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Under Maine law, Democrats can replace Platner on the ballot because he quit before a July 13 deadline. The state party has until July 27 to choose a new nominee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graham Platner, a scandal-plagued Democratic Senate nominee whose insurgent rise had drawn comparisons to Donald Trump, ended his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,46961,14299,322438,12,246428,298304,266567,10482,322436,3,167728,322439,322437,21,19,22,20,25,97136,24,2002,20433],"class_list":["post-751798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-chuck-schumer","tag-democratic-party","tag-democratic-senatorial-campaign-committee","tag-donald-trump","tag-graham-platner","tag-jenny-racicot","tag-kirsten-gillibrand","tag-maine","tag-maine-democratic-party","tag-news","tag-politico","tag-rape-allegation","tag-republican-senator-susan-collins","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-senate","tag-usa","tag-washington","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}