Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson on Saturday won the state Democratic Party’s U.S. Senate nomination, formally ending a two week scramble to replace Graham Platner on the ballot for November’s midterm election. Platner withdrew on July 10 after sexual assault allegations were made against him, which he denies. The overwhelming majority of roughly 600 delegates at a party convention in Bangor selected Jackson over Saundra Pelletier, a biopharmaceutical executive, launching a 101 day sprint to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins in what is widely seen as the single most important Senate race for determining control of the chamber. Jackson will face Collins, a five term incumbent who has held the seat since 1997, in a contest that both parties view as a must win. Maine is the only state where Republicans are defending a Senate seat in territory that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won in 2024, making it Democrats’ best pickup opportunity as they seek to regain the majority for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s administration. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and losing Maine would severely complicate their path to maintaining control.
Jackson, a fifth generation logger from rural northern Maine and former Republican who switched to the Democratic Party in 2004, has positioned himself as a progressive champion of working class voters. His speech before the vote reflected his party’s broader strategy of tying Republicans to cost of living issues expected to dominate the midterms. “Working people are getting crushed in this country… Meanwhile, the billionaires and corporations rigging this economy keep getting richer and Susan Collins has done every damn thing that they ask for nearly 30 years,” Jackson said. He has called for Medicare for All, the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency whose agents killed a 26 year old Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13, and has been endorsed by Our Revolution, the political organization founded by Senator Bernie Sanders, whose 2016 presidential campaign Jackson ran in Maine. Jackson’s campaign said it raised more than $1 million since entering the truncated race, though he faces a significant fundraising gap against Collins, who has amassed an $11 million war chest and holds the powerful perch as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which she has used to steer federal resources to Maine. Collins, 73, won her 2020 race by nearly 9 percentage points even as Maine voters backed Democrat Joe Biden over Trump by a similar margin, and Harris carried the state by about 7 points in 2024. A University of New Hampshire poll released this week showed Jackson holding a narrow lead over Collins among likely general election voters, suggesting the race will be competitive despite Collins’ incumbency advantage.
The contest is already shaping up to be a bruising ideological fight. Collins has dismissed Jackson as a “Bernie Bro” whose positions are “clearly” in line with socialism, while Republicans have seized on his past to paint him as too extreme for Maine voters. Jackson’s record includes opposing abortion rights and same sex marriage during his early legislative career before reversing those positions in 2016, a shift Republicans are already highlighting in attack ads. The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC that has pledged to spend at least $42 million in Maine, launched a six-figure ad campaign against Jackson on Saturday accusing him of having “anger issues” and “a history of conflicts with women,” referencing a 2021 incident in which he flung a water bottle during a heated legislative argument over prescription drug costs. Jackson has acknowledged he should not have thrown the bottle, saying, “I was passionate. Do I wish I’ve never yelled or anything like that? Sure.” The race will also test Collins’ ability to maintain her moderate brand in an increasingly polarized environment, particularly on immigration, where she voted for $70 billion in ICE enforcement funding without reforms last month but called for a pause in the agency’s traffic stops, a position Trump has since rejected. With affordability, Trump’s leadership, and immigration expected to be the defining issues, and with Democrats needing victories in Maine, North Carolina, Alaska, and Ohio while defending open seats in Michigan and Minnesota, the outcome in this northeastern battleground could well decide which party controls the Senate for the remainder of Trump’s presidency.
