The Maine Democratic Party chose former state Sen. Troy Jackson to run against Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in November. The previous candidate, Graham Planter, dropped out after being accused of rape. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
Democrats in Maine chose Troy Jackson to run for Senate to replace the scandal-riddled candidate Graham Platner at a convention Saturday.
The win came in a vote of 566-5 on the first ballot at the convention, which was organized in the 17 days since Platner dropped out of the race.
Platner had faced a list of scandals, then was accused of rape, which he denies.
Jackson, 58, a former Maine state senator, has been in the state’s political landscape for 25 years. He will face Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a five-term Republican who has tried to portray herself as a moderate.
“Today we turn the page,” Jackson told delegates in Bangor Saturday. “Today, we begin the work of defeating Susan Collins in November.”
The race is seen as critical in the battle to control the Senate after this year’s elections. Gaining political control of Congress is the only chance Democrats have of fighting back against President Donald Trump’s policies.
“Troy Jackson is a fifth-generation logger with a demonstrated ability to win. A champion for affordable health care and working people, Jackson has harnessed the grassroots energy in Maine and is well-positioned to defeat Susan Collins, who is more vulnerable than she has ever been,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said in a joint statement after the vote Saturday.
“Collins is facing record-low approvals after she voted with Trump 96% of the time, was the decisive vote for the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and sold out to the special interests that fund her campaigns after three decades in the Senate. In November, we will defeat Susan Collins and win a Senate majority,” Schumer and Gillibrand said.
Jackson is a former logger who began his career in politics in the late 1990s when he organized against Canadian workers who crossed the border to work for lower wages than Americans. He is a veteran legislator and was expected to win after county meetings last weekend showed that delegates heavily supported him. All his opponents then dropped out.
“For nearly 30 years, Collins has told Maine that she is concerned,” Jackson said Saturday at the convention. “She was concerned while she rubber-stamped Trump’s Medicaid cuts and gutted our health care. She’s concerned when she cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Concerned when she confirmed justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. And really tragically, she was concerned when she gave ICE billions to terrorize our neighbors and murder people in the streets with no accountability.”
“But concern does not lower the costs of groceries or gas. Concern does not keep our monitoring wards of rural hospitals, like down in Lincoln County, open. Concern does not restore all the rights that she’s taken away,” Jackson said.
“Maine does not need another six years of concern,” he said. “We need someone with courage. We need a fighter, and we need a senator who remembers exactly who sent them to Washington.”
Collins’ spokesperson responded to similar attacks from Jackson.
“Troy Jackson is showing us the low-energy version of the Graham Platner campaign,” Blake Kernen told NBC News. “He lies about the facts and makes empty promises without plans. That is why he came in third in the Democratic primary for governor a month ago.”
Collins and Jackson are from the same area — Aroostook County in the northern tip of the state, not far from Quebec City, Canada.
Former Aroostook County Democratic Committee chair and a pro-Jackson delegate Shelly Mountain said this campaign was about working people.
“The working class has been left behind and forgotten about,” Mountain told NBC. “He is definitely working class and always — has always — been a champion for the working class.”
Maine Democratic strategist David Farmer said that Jackson has a chance to win, just by garnering enough votes in Democratic cities.
Farmer told NBC he was optimistic that this year, Democrats would stick together.
“The reactions to Trump, to the ICE killing in Biddeford, to high prices, to the war [with Iran] — that solidifies Democrats so they’re less likely to drift than in 2020,” Farmer said of the previous election in which Collins beat a Democratic challenger.
