This week was supposed to decide Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee. Instead, after former state Sen. Troy Jackson all but cleared the field over the weekend, it has become the unofficial start of the general election against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Over a two-day marathon of county meetings, Democratic voters chose the roughly 500 delegates who will select the nominee at a hastily arranged convention this weekend. The vast majority were Jackson supporters, drawn from a slate of delegate candidates his campaign had published last week.
The overwhelming result prompted Jackson’s leading opponents to withdraw by Sunday night, upending a process the Maine Democratic Party had scrambled to build in the three weeks since primary winner Graham Platner dropped out amid scandal.
Political observers in Maine credited Jackson’s organizing power — aided in part by supporters of Platner. Democrats in the state are betting that grassroots enthusiasm can carry Jackson, a logger from the northern part of the state who ran unsuccessfully for governor this year, past Collins in a contest national party leaders see as a prime pickup opportunity in their drive for a Senate majority.
“I think [Jackson’s win] speaks to the organization of the Platner campaign,” said Marcia Myers, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Hancock County. “They had people together, they identified who they wanted” as delegates.
Andrew Rudalevige, a political science professor at Bowdoin College, told MS NOW that Jackson took advantage of a delegate selection system that allowed the campaigns to identify their hard-core supporters and promote them as potential delegates — even though all delegates remained nominally unpledged.
“There were some folks in the party who said we’ll elect folks who are uncommitted, and there will be a week of deep thought [before the convention],” Rudalevige said. “That was not the stance his campaign took, but that was smart.”
Jackson won’t officially be the nominee until the delegates vote at Saturday’s convention in Bangor, but in Maine and Washington alike, he is already being treated as Collins’ challenger.
His campaign has seen a surge in online fundraising in the last three days through ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s main small-dollar fundraising platform, according to a person familiar with the campaign.
Jackson himself indicated that he has turned his attention to the general election.
“In November, we are going to defeat Susan Collins and reclaim our Senate seat,” he wrote in an X post on Monday.
Winning, though, will require unity from Maine Democrats, some of whom told MS NOW in recent days they were “grieving” Platner’s sudden departure from the race.
“There was one thing we had to do when Platner pulled out: keep people together,” said Myers, adding that the rallying around Jackson over the weekend “made me optimistic.”
But not everyone felt the delegate-selection process was a unifying event.
“I think people are going to view it as the party picking the candidate, and that is automatically a weakness,” said a state committee member who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “We saw that with Kamala Harris in 2024. People perceived it as a coronation instead of people having a fair choice.
“There cannot be any kind of fracture in the party to beat Susan Collins,” the person added.
Jackson, who also ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2014, will now face a challenge he has never seen in his years in politics, and observers are already noting potential weaknesses.
“I don’t think Jackson has the charisma or ability to speak on his feet that Platner does,” said Rudalevige. “But it comes with a lot less baggage in other areas.”
Jackson is already facing scrutiny. Reports Monday by The Washington Post and CNN described Jackson as a hot-tempered figure during his tenure as state Senate president.
And his evolution on abortion rights — which he opposed earlier in his career before championing pro-choice causes — could stick with some voters.
Nora Walsh-DeVries, vice president of political and legislative affairs at Planned Parenthood Action Fund, told MS NOW previously that she couldn’t speak for voters on whether Jackson’s previous opposition to abortion would be disqualifying for Mainers.
“This has always been about the power building and the seat-flipping over the person, and it will continue to be about that until we get rid of Susan Collins,” she said.
Julianne McShane contributed to this article.
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