Maine Democrats pick Troy Jackson as Senate candidate after Platner withdrawal

This weekend, Maine Democrats overwhelmingly signaled their belief that a former logger and longtime state senator can unseat GOP Senator Susan Collins.

Troy Jackson (Photo: Aren LeBrun / cc)

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

Platner grew up a short drive away, and his mother runs a store in town, so his presence loomed over the proceedings. Many attendees still wore "Platner for Senate" shirts. Someone had addressed an oversized sheet of paper to Platner and his wife, with dozens of well-wishers leaving notes such as:

• "Your message remains."
• "Feel pride in what you started."
• One note, unmistakably written in Downeast Maine, read: "Graham, you are the leavener that started this dough rising! We couldn't bake the bread without your power."

The Race to Fill the Vacuum

As soon as the state Democratic Party announced the rules for replacing Platner, the contest became about who could step into the void he left behind. Given how many people Platner's campaign had energized, most progressives here were clear-eyed in their belief that the only way to defeat Susan Collins—who has beaten establishment candidate after establishment candidate across five elections—was to find someone capable of making an equally forceful case for supporting the working class and dismantling corrupt systems of power.

Standing near a picnic table outside, Carole Beal, a delegate candidate from Blue Hill, told me: "I voted for a movement, not a man."

For Beal, the choice was clear. Troy Jackson—a former logger and longtime state senator from the North Woods—was the closest policy match to Platner and seemed able 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 finish, a bagpiper in a red tartan suit began playing, signaling that we should follow him into the school gymnasium for the vote.

A Compressed Convention Process

I edged through groups of excited voters sipping Dunkin' Donuts coffee and found Jana Robinson, a delegate candidate who had hung a poster board on her back featuring photos of Jackson and his two leading rivals:

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

All three had also run for governor in last month's primary—a race in which Shah appeared poised to win before falling to second place behind state House Speaker Hannah Pingree, due to Maine's ranked-choice voting system.

As if Maine's electoral mechanics weren't complicated enough, the statutory requirement to replace Platner on the ballot by July 27 meant the state party resolved to find a new Senate nominee through a compressed convention process. The Ellsworth meeting was just 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. Whichever candidate received 301 or more votes would win the nomination.

Jackson Takes the Lead

Robinson, who lives on Mount Desert Island near Acadia National Park, was handing out markers and asking people to check the name of their preferred candidate. "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 led in Robinson's straw poll. After we sat down on the bleachers, a woman 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 emerged as the decisive winner of the 16 county conventions. At least 456 of the 500 elected delegates pledged to vote for Jackson at the nominating convention in Bangor this Saturday. All of Jackson's rivals have dropped out, effectively ending any speculation about whom Democrats believe is best positioned to carry forward the energy unleashed by Platner in their latest bid to unseat Susan Collins.

Jackson's Reaction

Jackson himself seems stunned by how quickly 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."