Last month, as accusations that Graham Platner of Maine had demeaned and threatened women consumed his Senate campaign, his left-wing allies closed ranks around him.
Representative Ro Khanna of California posted a video on social media sitting alongside Mr. Platner on a floating dock discussing “transformational politics.” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Mr. Platner had “gotten his life together” despite his troubling past.
“There are no saints in the United States Senate,” Mr. Sanders said at the time.
This week, after one of those women accused Mr. Platner of rape, those same politicians withdrew their support, and Mr. Platner, who denied the accusation, announced Wednesday that he was suspending his campaign. The collapse of his meteoric candidacy has turned what had been a triumph for progressives into a moment of political crisis.
It has also set off a broader debate among Democrats around the country about the movement that Mr. Sanders leads: Is its embrace of a blunt and brawny populism too dismissive of women — and too forgiving of male misconduct? The question is not new, but it has grown more urgent this year, when the party has elevated inexperienced and authentic candidates, such as the flannel-clad Mr. Platner, to stir average Americans.
“What I have an issue with is not the policies,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, a gun-safety group, who was castigated online for not backing Mr. Platner. “It’s the lack of character. It’s being bombastic. It’s that you’re polarizing and alienating and, frankly, it’s also being denigrating toward women.”
Perhaps no one had as much riding on Mr. Platner’s stunning rise from small-town oyster farmer to candidate for Senate as Mr. Sanders, the best known figure of the political left, who has spent the past year helping catapult progressive newcomers in competitive midterm contests.
Mr. Platner’s collapse has left a blemish on that effort, and brought scrutiny to Mr. Sanders and others who embraced him.
How those leaders respond could determine not only the path forward for the progressive movement but also their own political trajectories. Mr. Sanders, who is 84 and serving his fourth term in the Senate, has been widely seen as attempting to burnish his legacy by anointing a new generation of leaders as he enters the final chapter of his own career.
Some of Mr. Platner’s backers have concluded publicly that they erred in backing a candidate whose personal history was riddled with warning signs.
“I made the wrong call,” Mr. Khanna said in an interview on Thursday. “I missed the signs. Are there any takeaways? Being even more sensitive to warning signs or red flags in candidates who may have those kinds of allegations show up.”
In a statement, Mr. Sanders admitted no missteps, though he seemed to acknowledge the criticism that is stirring up the left by noting that many of the candidates he has supported are women. This year, that group includes high-profile House candidates Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin, Claire Valdez in New York and Melat Kiros in Colorado.
“The establishment is getting nervous,” Mr. Sanders said in the statement. “Working families across the country understand that we have a rigged economy and a corrupt campaign finance system. And that is why so many progressive candidates, including many talented women, are successfully taking on the greed of the billionaire class. Some of the outstanding members of Congress are women who I and the progressive movement have supported.”
Polls show that Mr. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is one of the most popular figures in Democratic politics at a time when the party is struggling with its branding. Mr. Sanders has frequently jabbed at the news media and political establishment for focusing on candidates’ personal lives over their support for policies such as his proposal for universal health care, which he calls Medicare for all.
Still, Mr. Sanders’s movement has weathered criticism over the years for fostering a culture that has at times seemed intolerant of women. When he first sought the presidential nomination in 2016, his army of online supporters, known widely as “Bernie bros,” were condemned for bullying those supporting his main adversary, Hillary Clinton. Mr. Sanders said he did not condone the behavior.
Then, as he geared up for his 2020 run, some female staffers from Mr. Sanders’s 2016 campaign said that they had faced mistreatment and pay disparities and that their supervisors had ignored their concerns. He did not face similar complaints after 2020.
Also that year, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, his progressive rival in the primary, confirmed a report that Mr. Sanders had privately questioned in 2018 whether a woman could win the presidency. Mr. Sanders denied making such a comment, calling the suggestion “ludicrous.”
Jessica Mackler, the president of Emily’s List, a group that works to elect Democratic women, said political strategists have at times rushed to create “magical” candidates — “the mythical bearded man that is the one that’s going to connect with working class voters”— at the expense of experienced women who know their communities and can win elections.
“The online echo chamber that exists and is where often times these personas are cultivated — that’s not organic,” she said. “That is being created around people and being served to voters.”
Paige Loud, who worked on the Platner campaign before running unsuccessfully for Congress, said she raised concerns while on his team about the potential for allegations against the candidate and what she described as a dismissive attitude toward women.
Men from across the political spectrum can mistreat women, said Ms. Loud, 29, who is now vying to replace Mr. Platner as the Democratic Senate nominee. But on the left, she said, “They can do terrible things but then go, ‘Oh, but I support Medicare for all.’”
Mr. Sanders’s supporters say his movement has come a long way since 2016. This year, a number of progressive women of color that Mr. Sanders endorsed, many of them young political newcomers, won congressional primaries in New York, New Jersey and Colorado over establishment candidates with longer résumés. Mr. Sanders has also championed issues many women care about, including abortion rights and climate change.
Nida Allam, a North Carolina progressive who narrowly lost a bid to oust a Democratic congresswoman this year, said Mr. Sanders had been decade-long mentor who opened doors for her.
Young female candidates are “always pushed onto the sideline — you’re too inexperienced or too young,” said Ms. Allam, 33. “But Senator Sanders says, ‘Yeah, we need Muslim women and we need working moms, because they have the lived experience of the everyday American.’”
The latest reckoning erupted on Monday, when Politico and CNN reported that Jenny Racicot, a Democrat from Maine, said Mr. Platner, whom she dated on and off from 2019 to 2021, had forced himself on her, even as she said no and tried to push him away. Mr. Platner denied “any accusation of non-consensual behavior.”
A wave of big-name Democrats quickly withdrew their support, including the progressives Ms. Warren, Mr. Khanna and Mr. Sanders — though Mr. Sanders waited more than 20 hours before doing so. (Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, an heir to Mr. Sanders’s movement, had never endorsed Mr. Platner.)
Mr. Khanna said it was “human nature” for those in ideological agreement with Mr. Platner to have given him “a greater benefit of the doubt.” Mr. Khanna said he had believed Mr. Platner to be “a reformer who is going to end foreign wars and take on economic inequality and fight for a new deal.”
Others were more critical.
Former Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York posted a video on social media this week saying that the left was due for “some honest conversations” about their defense of Mr. Platner. Mr. Bowman, who is Black, suggested that the fact that Mr. Platner is white had allowed him to remain in the Senate contest as long as he did.
“We looked the other way and uplifted and swept things under the rug,” Mr. Bowman said. “If he was a brother, one allegation would have finished him.”
Even Democrats sometimes at odds with Mr. Sanders agreed that neither he nor other progressives were responsible for Mr. Platner’s flaws.
Former Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who supported Mrs. Clinton’s primary campaign against Mr. Sanders and was assailed by some of his supporters, said Mr. Sanders was not at fault. Ms. Boxer noted that she had been close to endorsing former Representative Eric Swalwell for governor of California this year before a series of sexual assault allegations ended his career.
“I almost supported Swalwell, and who am I going to blame for that? Swalwell,” she said. “Do I blame Bernie and other people for Platner? No. I blame Platner for Platner.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
