Maine Democrats formally nominated former state Senate president Troy Jackson on Saturday to challenge Sen. Susan Collins in November, ending a two-week scramble to replace Graham Platner, whose June primary win collapsed under a sexual assault allegation he has denied.
Delegates gathered at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor voted 566-5 to install Jackson, giving the fifth-generation logger 101 days to build a general-election operation against a five-term incumbent whose campaign closed June with $11 million in cash on hand.
An unopposed coronation
Jackson faced only two little-known challengers, David Costello and pharmaceutical executive Saundra Pelletier, after every serious rival stepped aside earlier in the week. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former Maine Center for Disease Control director Nirav Shah abandoned their bids by July 19, clearing the field for the former state Senate president, who finished third in June's Democratic gubernatorial primary.
"When the people in power refuse to listen, you have to organize, you have to stand in solidarity, together. And you have to make them listen," Jackson told delegates, according to the Associated Press.
Maine law required the state party to name a replacement by Monday, 101 days before the Nov. 3 election. Platner, an oysterman and Marine veteran who had won the June 9 primary after Gov. Janet Mills dropped out, withdrew July 10 after Politico reported that a former girlfriend accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2021.
The money gap
Jackson's campaign said it raised more than $1 million since he entered the race, including $600,000 in the 72 hours before Saturday's vote. Collins has raised more than $16 million so far, and the Senate Leadership Fund, the Republican super PAC, said it would spend more than $42 million against Jackson.
Collins, 73, has already begun defining her opponent. She told reporters this week that Jackson's positions are "clearly" in line with socialism and called him a "Bernie Bro," a reference to his role running Sen. Bernie Sanders's first presidential campaign in Maine. Her campaign spokesperson, Shawn Roderick, said Jackson "will attempt to sell Mainers a multi-trillion dollar bill of goods based on rhetoric that will make everything sound free, but in reality would be paid for by middle and lower income workers."
The right's read
The Washington Examiner framed Saturday's vote as the Sanders wing picking up the pieces of the Platner campaign, noting that Jackson has embraced Medicare for All, called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and pledged to "never vote in favor of US taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel." Republican National Committee spokesperson Kristen Cianci called Jackson "a Platner apologist, a radical Bernie Bro, and a walking red flag displaying all the warning signs of the early days of the Platner campaign."
Jackson said Saturday that he had not spoken with Platner since the withdrawal and was building a new coalition. "Today we turn the page," he told delegates. "Today this becomes a general election campaign, and today we begin the work of defeating Susan Collins in November."