When Graham Platner dropped out of the Senate race in Maine in July after a rape allegation he denied, it deflated many Democrats who had rallied to his campaign.
Three months later, some Democrats in the state are worried about the enthusiasm for Mr. Platner’s last-minute replacement, Troy Jackson, in his pivotal race against Senator Susan Collins, a fifth-term Republican. In the final weeks of a close race, Mr. Jackson and his allies are still trying to excite voters who were disillusioned after the summer switch.
This weekend, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a leader of the progressive movement who is popular across New England, decamped to the state for a three-rally trip to try to energize Mr. Jackson’s campaign. Mr. Sanders, once a chief political patron of Mr. Platner, also has deep connections to Mr. Jackson, who served as a Maine state chair of Mr. Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
On Saturday night, at a rally in a Bangor convention center, Mr. Sanders declared that Mr. Jackson was running an “extraordinary” campaign and noted that the circumstances in which Mr. Jackson had entered the race “ain’t easy.”
The visit by Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, comes as Republicans are eager to paint Democratic candidates, including Mr. Jackson, as far-left extremists. Part of Mr. Jackson’s challenge in the closing stage of the race will be finding ways to fire up his party’s base without alienating moderate voters.
On Sunday, Mr. Sanders and Mr. Jackson visited a soaring former church in working-class Lewiston, where the crowd buzzed long before either man took the stage. Piles of blue T-shirts bearing Mr. Jackson’s name rested on tables, “I’m With Troy” yard signs were stacked against the walls and a hundreds-strong standing-room crowd filled the building.
“I hear the lull in enthusiasm,” said Mary Loan, 29, of Lewiston, said of Mr. Jackson’s campaign, adding that Mr. Sanders had helped draw her out on Sunday morning. “Bernie is such a strong force, and a lot of people really look up to him.”
Opinion polls show Mr. Jackson running in a dead heat with Ms. Collins with three weeks until the Nov. 3 election, and early voting has started in Maine. Mr. Jackson is running on a progressive platform similar to Mr. Platner’s, calling for universal health care and the elimination of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But some in the crowd on Sunday said they were concerned about Mr. Jackson’s chances. After Mr. Platner’s departure, Mr. Jackson, a runner-up in the primary for Maine governor who can speak in an unpolished, halting style, assumed the Senate nomination through a rushed statewide convention process. When the Platner yard signs vanished, some have observed, Jackson signs did not always crop up.
But Mr. Jackson’s supporters said his campaign appears to be gaining steam after two debates in which he outperformed expectations of many in either party, adding that they hoped Mr. Sanders’s arrival would activate some Democrats.
Bill Zima, 60, and his wife, Sarah Zima, 57, two former teachers, came from Portland to Lewiston to see Mr. Sanders. Mr. Zima said “there was that sense of excitement that went out” after the candidate substitution.
Still, he predicted that “ultimately people are going to come back,” adding that “Bernie will help with this.”
Ms. Zima appeared less confident. “I don’t know,” she said. “I hope people will get behind him.”
A political organizer at the rally, Crystale Lapham, 44, a former volunteer for Mr. Platner from Falmouth, Maine, said the campaign was “not the same” with Mr. Jackson atop the ticket. “He’s not a powerful orator,” Ms. Lapham said of Mr. Jackson, adding, “That energy gap is real.”
But she added that she believed Mr. Sanders’s arrival would remind voters of Mr. Jackson’s ties to the progressive movement.
“The door-knockers and volunteers are extremely excited that he’s here,” Ms. Lapham said of Mr. Sanders. She said there had been questions about how involved Mr. Sanders, who last campaigned in the state in May, would be in the race. “Like, where is Bernie?”
Mr. Sanders was with Mr. Jackson at the former church on Sunday, addressing a rapt crowd. Mr. Jackson was met with loud chants of “Troy! Troy!” as he began his remarks.
“I am just a working-class guy with a funny accent,” Mr. Jackson said, referring to his thick Acadian accent, and vowed to fight for working-class Mainers.
Mr. Sanders prosecuted a case against the Trump administration and said that while he did not “mean to be disrespectful to either Susan Collins or Troy,” the race was about “much more than either of those candidates.”
“If we as a nation want to hold Trump and his disastrous policies accountable, the only way we can do that is by electing a Democratic Senate,” Mr. Sanders said, adding that the race could determine the national battle for Senate control.
“I don’t want to get the people of Maine too nervous,” Mr. Sanders said. “But you can make all of the difference.”
Some Maine Democrats say those stakes them nervous. Still, the line drew one of the loudest cheers of the afternoon.
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