SCARBOROUGH, Maine — The yard signs outside the banquet hall read “Troy Jackson,” but that was the extent of the introduction that the Senate candidate would receive on Monday evening.
As a crowd of about 300 Mainers took their seats, former Maine state senator Linda Sanborn stepped onstage to introduce the event, a town-hall-style conversation between Jackson, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, and Nirav Shah, the state’s former top public health official. After ticking off a long list of Shah’s accolades and accomplishments, she beckoned the duo to the stage. But she’d forgotten one small thing: introducing Jackson.
As Jackson and Shah took their seats in opposing armchairs, Sanborn corrected herself. “And Troy Jackson!” she added hastily into the microphone, prompting another round of light applause from the audience. “Our next U.S. senator!”
It was a fitting introduction — or lack thereof — for Jackson, the progressive challenger fighting to unseat incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R) in Maine’s closely watched Senate contest.
Since replacing Graham Platner — who withdrew from the race in July amid sexual misconduct allegations — on the Democratic ticket, Jackson has cut a notably understated figure in the race. His race against Collins could help decide control of the Senate.
A former logger and former president of the Maine state Senate, Jackson has leaned into his everyman persona on the trail, showing up to campaign events in cargo shorts and crisscrossing the state in his 2016 Dodge minivan. On Monday, he strode into the banquet hall in Scarborough wearing his signature cellphone holster clipped to his belt, before cracking open a can of Diet Coke onstage.
His unassuming aura, bolstered by his thick Maine accent, has endeared Jackson to some Democratic voters in the state, where recent polls show him holding a very slim lead over Collins. “He’s campaigning in Maine,” said Judy Braley, a Jackson supporter who drove 45 minutes to the event with her husband from their hometown of Limington. “We’re down-to-Earth people.”
But with just six weeks until the election, the same question loomed over Jackson’s abbreviated campaign and the town hall in Scarborough: Can a candidate this unassuming beat Collins, a formidable retail politician who has repeatedly won every race for three decades despite running in a state that has backed Democrats for president in every election since 1992?
Jackson’s populism and his unpolished approach to politics were apparent in his hour-long appearance in Scarborough. Onstage, Jackson ticked off his support for a standard set of progressive policy priorities: fighting for universal health care and child care; passing the pro-union Pro Act; overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision, which allows corporations to spend unlimited money on elections; and codifying a legal right to abortion.
He largely avoided the sort of pointed attacks on Republicans that have been a stump staple of many progressive candidates. His fiercest line of the evening called out U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, whom he derided as “misfits” who had “failed at something else.” His most direct attack on Collins targeted her opposition to Medicare-for-all, which he suggested was hypocritical given the government-sponsored health care she’s received in Congress.
Afterward, several attendees said they had trouble following Jackson at times. His accent, soft-spoken delivery and finicky microphones all caused problems. “It was kind of hard to hear him,” said Paul Jessen, a Jackson supporter from Scarborough. “I was sort of wishing that he would speak up a little bit.”
“Troy is who he is, accent and all,” David Farmer, a senior adviser to Jackson, said in a statement Wednesday. What matters most to Mainers, Farmer said, is Jackson’s “willingness to fight corporations and billionaires, to advocate for Medicare-for-all and the abolition of ICE, and to stand up to Donald Trump.”
Other supporters saw Jackson’s low-key style as a selling point. Braley’s husband, Brian, said that he had felt “questionable” about supporting Jackson’s predecessor in part because he found Platner’s gravelly-voiced and expletive-laden speeches off-putting. By contrast, he said, he appreciates Jackson’s plainspoken presentation. “He’s not polished, but he’s genuine,” Braley said. “And I’m anxious for someone genuine.”
Jessen, who supported Platner until allegations of sexual assault emerged in July, said that Jackson’s blandness is a welcome contrast. “He’s clearly a regular guy, a working guy. That’s not a line. It’s not manufactured.”
By the same token, Jessen said, Jackson’s mellow demeanor cuts against the image that Republicans have tried to draw of him, as a belligerent and short-tempered bully. A Senate Leadership Fund ad in July accused Jackson of a “history of conflicts with women, bullying, even intimidation,” citing a 2021 argument in which he threw a water bottle while confronting a Democratic colleague, then-state Sen. Heather Sanborn. Witnesses said the bottle struck no one.
A Washington Post examination in July, drawing on interviews with more than two dozen people, found that Jackson’s temper was a feature of his tenure as state Senate president. That included a 2024 dispute over gun legislation in which, two people said, he banged on a table, cursed and got close to then-House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross’s face. A Jackson adviser acknowledged in July “moments when he let his frustration get the better of him” but denied any “physical intimidation or bullying.”
Jessen said he doesn’t think criticisms of Jackson’s temper land with Mainers given the mild-mannered persona he has displayed on the trail. “He’s just so salt-of-the-Earth — just a good, decent man,” Jessen said.
Jackson’s race against Collins, a formidable political stalwart who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, was jolted on Tuesday, the day after Jackson’s town hall in Scarborough, when nonprofit newsroom ProPublica reported that an FBI public-corruption inquiry involving a close Collins ally died after the Trump administration gutted the bureau’s anti-corruption units. According to ProPublica, the investigation was looking into Collins’s dealings with the defense contractor Navatek and a $150,000 donation to her allied super PAC.
A spokesperson for Collins has denied as “categorically false” allegations in the report that the Collins campaign attempted to circumvent campaign finance rules. In a social media post Tuesday, Jackson called the allegations “corruption of the highest order” and called for “answers about every contract and every conversation that Collins and her team facilitated on the backs of taxpayers.”
But at the town hall Monday night, before the report landed, there was little indication that Jackson was losing much sleep over the state of the race. As Shah put it as the event hit the one-hour mark, it was time to wrap things up. “It’s almost 8 o’clock in Maine,” Shah said, “which means it’s well past all of our bedtimes.”
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