In the span of just a few days, Troy Jackson, the former president of Maine’s state senate, has emerged as the likely replacement for Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. In his favor: His platform — Medicare for all, abolish ICE, no military aid to Israel — is similar to Mr. Platner’s. Not in his favor: He’s less magnetic, and in June, he finished third in Maine’s Democratic primary for governor.
It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss Mr. Jackson as a bargain bin (or a Marden’s bargain, as they might say in Maine) version of Mr. Platner. Mr. Jackson might be the Graham Platner that Maine Democrats were always looking for.
For starters, he’s a seasoned elected official who has served in both houses of the state legislature. He’s a populist, beloved by the state’s labor unions, but not really an outsider or an insurgent.
He is, in many respects, the Everyman that the Platner marketing team wanted to pitch. Mr. Jackson is from the interior part of the state, not the touristy coast. His blue-collar profession was logging, a traditional Maine natural resource industry, not oyster farming, a recent import from farther south. He’s from a working-class family, unlike Mr. Platner, the prep-school-educated lawyer’s son. And in his district, Mr. Jackson has shown a distinct ability to win the votes of working-class Mainers who’ve traditionally voted for Democrats but flipped to Donald Trump and former Gov. Paul LePage in more recent cycles.
Will this electoral appeal translate to a larger audience?
Mr. Jackson lacks both the in-room and the on-camera charisma that powered Mr. Platner’s meteoric rise.
Mr. Jackson’s electoral success also comes in a very specific context. His hometown, Allagash, is tiny and remote — it’s a longer drive from Portland, Maine, than Portland is from New York City. As I recall from a long wilderness canoe trip I took years ago, it has only one restaurant, the Two Rivers Lunch. (It also serves breakfast.) The towns on the Canadian side of the nearby border are larger than Allagash, and the cultural and economic orientation of the region is often more toward Canada than to the rest of the state. There is a notable Francophone minority in the area, and Mr. Jackson speaks with a distinctive Acadian accent.
Like many constituents in his traditionally Catholic home base, Mr. Jackson used to be anti-abortion and skeptical of same-sex marriage. It worked politically in a district that was swinging to the right, but it put him out of step with mainstream Democrats. As he ascended the ladder of state politics, Mr. Jackson evolved into a more conventional progressive on cultural issues. He retained his own electoral strength locally, but in 2024, the year he was term-limited out, his state senate district went for Mr. Trump, even as Kamala Harris won the state comfortably.
Which is a reminder that for all the focus on Mr. Platner’s supposed ability to appeal to Trump voters, Maine is, overall, a blue state. It’s an idiosyncratic one: much whiter and more sparsely populated than most of the rest of blue America, but still quite secular. About 40 percent of its population lives in solidly blue Greater Portland, and the state didn’t see the Democratic slippage that others did in 2024. The political landscape suggests that all Democrats really need to do to defeat the incumbent Republican, Senator Susan Collins, is persuade enough Democrats who’ve voted three times against Mr. Trump to vote Democratic this fall.
In a sense, Maine is the inverse of other critical 2026 Senate battlegrounds such as North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and Texas. Mr. Jackson’s culturally conservative background — which would be a clear asset in a red state — may be a booby trap in some Maine precincts. Ms. Collins can argue in the southern part of the state that she, unlike her opponent, has been a defender of abortion rights her whole career while in the northern interior she can campaign as tough on border security.
Still, the deftness of Mr. Jackson’s dominant performance in recent days reflects a useful set of political skills.
When Mr. Platner dropped out, Maine Democrats didn’t have time to organize a second primary. So they opted for a convention with delegates selected via a series of county caucuses. This semi-open process heavily favored intensive organizing over mass communication. The Jackson team succeeded in mobilizing committed delegates throughout the state in a way that none of his rivals really did, allowing him to crush the opposition after an unimpressive performance in a more conventional gubernatorial primary; his principal opponents rapidly called it quits.
Given Mr. Trump’s sinking approval ratings, Ms. Collins, like many other Northeastern Republicans, would be facing an uphill battle against any Democratic nominee. Mr. Jackson, though not without his weaknesses, is on paper a very strong opponent. He has the backing of the progressive movement that boosted Mr. Platner — and experience from his time in the legislature building coalitions with more moderate Democrats. A tumultuous July is setting up a general election that should favor a tested Democrat like Mr. Jackson. But after watching her survive nightmarish political moments for Republicans in 2008 and 2020, nobody should count Ms. Collins out.
Matthew Yglesias is the author of “One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post Maine Democrats Are About to Replace an Oysterman With a Lumberjack. It Might Just Work. appeared first on New York Times.
