Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate for Maine, during a primary election night at the Blue Hill YMCA in Maine on June 9, 2026.
(Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Graham Platner is withdrawing as Democratic candidate for Maine Senate after a credible allegation of rape was made against him (Platner denies the allegation). I spoke to Maine writer Eoin Higgins about Platner’s rise and fall, the progressive politics that animated his campaign and the Maine Democratic Party’s coming scramble to find a new candidate.
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Damn Lord Jeet Heer is national affairs correspondent for The nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, Time of the Monsters. He also writes the monthly column “Morbid symptoms.” The author of Art lovers: the adventures of Françoise Mouly in comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: reviews, essays and profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American perspective, The guardian, The New RepublicAnd The Boston Globe.
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