Maine Democrats pick ex-logger Troy Jackson to replace Graham Platner in Senate race

Democrats in Maine overwhelmingly showed that they believe the former logger and longtime state senator is best positioned to dethrone GOP Senator Susan Collins.

Troy Jackson. (Aren LeBrun / cc)

Ellsworth, Me. — More than 500 Mainers packed into a middle-school cafeteria here on Saturday morning. Party officials, activists, and voters were gathering to choose the 23 delegates who Hancock County would send to a nominating convention after Graham Platner withdrew from the race just eight days earlier, following a credible rape accusation.

Platner grew up just a short drive away and his mother runs a store in town, so his presence hovered over the proceedings. Numerous attendees still wore "Platner for Senate" shirts, and someone had addressed an oversized sheet of paper to him and his wife, with dozens of well-wishers leaving notes like "Your message remains," and "Feel pride in what you started." One note that could have only been written in Downeast Maine went: "Graham, you are the leavener that started this dough rising! We couldn't bake the bread without your power."

As soon as the state Democratic Party announced the rules for replacing Platner, the race became about who could step into the vacuum he had left behind. Given how many people had been activated by Platner's campaign, most progressives here have been clear-eyed in their belief that the only way to beat Susan Collins—who has triumphed over establishment figure after establishment figure across five elections—was by finding a candidate capable of making a similarly forceful case for supporting the working class and tearing down corrupt systems of power.

Standing near a picnic table outside, a delegate candidate from Blue Hill named Carole Beal told me, "I voted for a movement, not a man." To her, the choice was clear: Troy Jackson, a former logger and longtime state senator from the North Woods, was the closest policy match for Platner and seemed to have the ability to connect with disengaged Mainers in the same way Platner had. "We want to see a senator in suspenders and L.L. Bean boots—"

Before Beal could complete her thought, a bagpiper in a red tartan suit began blasting a tune, indicating that we should follow him inside to the school's gymnasium for the vote. I edged through groups of excited voters sipping coffee from Dunkin' Donuts and found a delegate candidate named Jana Robinson, who had hung a poster board on her back with a picture of Jackson and his two leading rivals:

• Nirav Shah, who had led Maine's public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic
• Secretary of State Shenna Bellows

All three had also run for governor in last month's primary, a race in which Shah had seemed poised to triumph before he fell to second place behind the eventual winner, state house speaker Hannah Pingree, because of Maine's ranked-choice system.

As if Maine's normal electoral mechanics aren't complicated enough, the statutory obligation to replace Platner on the ballot by July 27 meant the state party had resolved to find a new senate nominee through a compressed convention process. The meeting in Ellsworth was only one of 16 held last weekend, with registered Democrats in each of Maine's 16 counties meeting to elect a total of 500 delegates. Then, on July 25, those delegates would join 101 party officials at a statewide convention, and whichever candidate received 301 or more votes at the convention would win the nomination.

Robinson, who lives on Mount Desert Island near Acadia National Park, was handing out markers and asking people to put a check under whoever they supported. "I didn't want to go in committed to one candidate," Robinson told me, "because I felt like I was representing all the people involved with Graham's campaign who aren't here." Despite Shah's strong showing in the governor's race, Jackson had the lead in Robinson's straw poll. After we'd sat down on the bleachers, a woman sitting next to Robinson leaned over and said, "You can add two more votes for Troy—me and my daughter are both supporting him."

By the end of the weekend, Jackson would indeed emerge as the decisive victor of the 16 county conventions. At least 456 of the 500 elected delegates pledged that they would vote for Jackson at the nominating convention in Bangor this Saturday. All of Jackson's rivals have dropped out, effectively ending any speculation about who Democrats believe is best positioned to carry forward the energy unleashed by Platner in their latest bid to dethrone Susan Collins.

Jackson himself seems stunned by how progressive activists rallied around him over the past week. "I've never seen anything like this," he told me ahead of the county meetings. "In 2016 with Bernie Sanders, I thought that campaign was the most exciting I'd ever been on. But this dwarfs that."