WISCASSET, Maine — As thousands of Democrats gathered in meetings across Maine over the weekend to take the first step to replace Graham Platner as their Senate nominee, former state Senate president Troy Jackson sprinted to an early lead.
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The choice will not become official until it is voted upon by 600 delegates to a state party convention in Bangor on Saturday. But in the first day of balloting, Jackson’s preferred slates of delegates were elected in nearly half of the state’s 16 counties, where rank-and-file Democrats met online, in school gyms and in civic centers.
Democrats, still reeling from Platner’s spectacular rise and fall, have been anxiously watching for signs that whoever takes his place on the ballot can regain the momentum and enthusiasm necessary to defeat Sen. Susan Collins (R) in the fall. Should the party fall short of flipping her seat in this Democratic-leaning state, its chances of regaining a majority in the Senate will be slimmer.
Jackson’s Saturday haul included 148 of the 149 delegates elected in Cumberland County, which is the home of Portland and had the state’s biggest trove by virtue of being the most populous. Voting continued Sunday in the eight counties that remain.
Even his own campaign was surprised by Jackson’s domination of the nomination process that the state party had hastily cobbled together after Platner stepped aside July 10 amid allegations, which he has denied, that he had committed sexual assault.
“I’ve been getting text messages all day about, you know, what a great job I did, and I didn’t do a goddamn thing,” Jackson said in a video statement to supporters that his campaign posted Saturday evening on social media. “All of you just smoked it.”
“We’re well on our way to getting the government we f—ing deserve,” the rough-edged new front-runner added.
In his bid for governor earlier this year, Jackson had placed third during the first round of ranked-choice voting in the June 9 Democratic primary, where he — like Platner in the Senate race — had the endorsement and progressive imprimatur of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).
Jackson, 58, is a logger with deep roots in conservative northern Maine who champions many of the progressive themes that Platner emphasized in his campaign, such as backing Medicare-for-all and vowing to take on corporate power.
Jackson quickly retooled his gubernatorial campaign operation for a truncated Senate race that included a dozen contenders, two of whom — Nirav Shah, the state’s former top health official, and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows — had competed against him in the gubernatorial race. Bellows dropped out of the Senate contest on Sunday.
Both Shah and Bellows appeared to have significant support at the county meetings, and Shah had outperformed Jackson in the gubernatorial primary. But the structure Saturday, in which leading Senate candidates had organized slates of preferred delegates, effectively turned many of the county results into something close to winner-take-all.
What the contest came down to, as Shah noted to reporters Saturday in Augusta, was “straight-up organizing.” Jackson, who had the backing of the state’s major unions, clearly turned out to be better at it.
Jackson served as state Senate president from late 2018 to late 2024. He had followed in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather to become a logger. Born to a 16-year-old single mother, he grew up — as his campaign website describes it — “a poor kid in a town full of poor kids.”
Although he first ran for office as a Republican and later became an independent before switching to the Democratic Party in 2004, Jackson picked up Platner’s mantle as a progressive populist and quickly emerged as a favorite.
“A lot of people have poured their hearts into the movement before I even entered this race,” he said in a speech to about 100 people in Portland on Friday night, in which he did not mention Platner by name.
“They believed that Maine could send a real working-class fighter to the United States Senate, and that hope does not belong to one person,” Jackson said. “That movement does not disappear.”
Speaking against the backdrop of scenic Casco Bay, which was dotted with yachts, he said that while “working people are being crushed more than ever,” billionaires and corporations “are making record profits, buying influence from Washington, and telling the rest of us that there is just nothing that we can do.”
Cathy Chapman, a South Portland social worker, was one of those who had shown up to hear Jackson.
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Though she was initially impressed by Platner’s charisma and blue-collar persona as an oyster farmer, Chapman said, she had grown disillusioned as she learned about more troubling sides of his story, including that he had written offensive posts on social media, sent sexually explicit texts to women while he was married, was accused of domestic violence and had grown up in privilege.
“I felt he had a lot of healing to do,” she said, adding that she ended up voting for Gov. Janet Mills in the primary.
What Jackson offered, she said, was the same set of progressive values that Platner espoused, but also a more authentic working-class background.
For some Democrats in Maine, the anger and disappointment surrounding Platner’s exit is still raw, and there is some talk of a write-in campaign to resurrect his candidacy.
But there are also signs that many others are ready to move on to the next battlefront. The state party reported that more than 19,000 Democrats had pre-registered to participate in the county meetings to select a new nominee and that nearly 4,000 were running to be delegates.
Given the size and complexity of such an endeavor, the voting was conducted through an online tool called Ballot Buddy.
The state’s Democrats, traumatized by Platner’s implosion, were uplifted by what has been happening in the aftermath. Officials in several places said they were seeing names and faces of people who had never shown up before at a party event.
Lincoln County Democratic Chairman Keith Mestrich gestured with delight to the lively crowd that had gathered in Wiscasset Middle High School ahead of delegate selection. “You’ve got people here lobbying their neighbors who to vote for,” he said. “It’s a beautiful exercise in democracy.”
Kristin Verbeck and Valerie Morin, both mental health counselors in Augusta, were hoping to go to the convention as Kennebec County delegates for Shah. Neither, they said, had participated in anything like this before, though Morin said, “I’ve always cared about democracy.”
So unfamiliar was she with the application process, Morin added, that she “had to ask ChatGPT to walk me through it.” The two women did not make the cut, however, as Jackson’s slate appeared to have won 37 of the county’s 40 delegate slots.
On Friday, on the outskirts of Portland, the local Democratic Party set up a table outside the Scarborough Town Hall, where people could indicate their Senate candidate preferences by dropping a glass bead into a bowl with that candidate’s name. “I wish we didn’t have to” vote again, one woman grumbled as she picked up her bead.
On the next table, people were invited to sign a petition urging local officials to shut down a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Scarborough. The town is less than 10 miles from Biddeford, where an ICE officer last week fatally shot 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national. Scarborough residents have held frequent protest vigils in the days since.
“The presence of ICE in Scarborough and in Maine puts us at greater risk for injury and death,” the petition said.
A second bullet point said: “We call upon our leaders to abolish ICE as they are currently operating. We call upon them to acknowledge they are ignoring the rule of law.”
Jon Anderson, the local Democratic chairman and a town council member, said he believes the tragedy has shifted the political dynamic for his party.
“It has accelerated people’s grieving for Graham [Platner] to grieving for what is happening in our state,” Anderson said.
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