WASHINGTON — Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has begun dropping campaign events from his schedule as a key deadline for replacing him on the ballot approaches.
The Platner campaign indefinitely postponed scheduled town halls in Augusta on Sunday and Gorham on Monday, as well as an event in Sanford that had its listing taken down.
Gorham Democrats claimed Monday morning that the Senate candidate was “not feeling well.”
The Platner campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sources told The Post that the reduced schedule comes as the Democrat and his team are anticipating another negative story about the candidate dropping soon.
Last month, The New York Times published a story about six ex-girlfriends of Platner, three of whom alleged he “hated women” — with one alleging he twisted her arm before locking her in her room during an argument, among other acts of physical abuse or intimidation.
“Throughout this campaign, I’ve been open about what was a very dark period of my life where I struggled with undiagnosed PTSD, too often self medicated with alcohol, and was a far from perfect boyfriend,” he said in a statement responding to the piece.
“I take responsibility for all of that, and wish I had been better. Any characterization beyond that is false, and I believe, politically motivated. I’m not proud of who I was then, but I am proud of the work I’ve done since, and the movement we are building in Maine.”
Platner visited DC last month before the The Pine Tree State’s primary election and stressed in a private meeting with Democratic senators that no credible allegations of sexual assault would be coming to light.
The Senate hopeful has also been dogged by allegations of sexting six other women while married, which he and his campaign acknowledged.
Until recently, Platner also maintained an active account on the private messaging app Kik, which is known as a hotbed for hookups, and displayed a picture on the profile of himself shirtless in a white towel.
That’s on top of stories last year about Platner making offensive comments on Reddit and getting a tattoo of a notorious Nazi SS symbol that he later replaced.
Two of his ex-girlfriends — one of whom worked for a Republican think tank and the other of whom identifies as a “leftist” — have said Platner lied about not knowing the origins of the skull-and-bones “Totenkopf” when first asked about the symbol on his chest last year.
Platner also had the tattoo replaced with the image of a Celtic knot in the shape of a dog.
A recent Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena College survey showed Platner leading Collins 49% to 47%, though 3% said they didn’t know whom they would support or declined to answer.
But just 44% said Platner had “good character,” whereas 66% of those surveyed shared that sentiment about Collins. Similarly, 45% said the Democrat “has the right kind of moral values,” compared with 61% who said that about Collins.
Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic leaders have still backed him in the challenge against Collins — one of three key races where the GOP is working to maintain its Senate majority.
“I am going to do everything I can to make sure that Graham Platner is the next senator from the state of Maine,” Sanders said in an interview with CBS News’ Robert Costa in June. “There are people in the United States Senate who are not saints, I can tell you that.”
The Vermont independent endorsed the 41-year-old Senate candidate due to his support of policies in favor of single-payer health care and hiking taxes for billionaires
“We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate,” Schumer also told reporters in early June, affirming his endorsement of Platner — despite having backed term-limited Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills beforehand.
