Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.
AUGUSTA, Maine — Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson holds a commanding lead among the fraction of potential Democratic delegates who will pick the next U.S. Senate nominee, but the vast majority of those running have indicated no preference.
Maine Democrats are replacing Graham Platner on the ballot against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins through a nominating convention rather than a primary. County caucuses this weekend will select 500 delegates, who join the party’s roughly 101-member state committee to form the 601 people who will choose the nominee at a July 25 convention in Bangor.
Late Thursday, the Maine Democratic Party released a list of 3,732 candidates standing for those 500 delegate seats, along with statements explaining their candidacies. A Bangor Daily News analysis of those statements found Jackson with 323 stated endorsements, well over former public health chief Nirav Shah’s 162 and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ 48.
But 3,195 of those delegate candidates, or roughly 86%, named no preference at all. Jackson’s total amounts to just 9% of the full field, leaving plenty of uncertainty going into this weekend’s caucuses. The campaigns are trying to shape this pool and wrangle enough rank-and-file supporters to elect delegates at the county level.
The rest of the 12-candidate field trails far behind the three former gubernatorial candidates. Jordan Wood and David Costello each show two endorsements. The other eight candidates, including Ashley Webb, Dan Kleban and Kristina Libby, show none.
Some of those numbers carry an asterisk. Costello and Shah are both running as delegates themselves and are counted as endorsing their own campaigns. Two candidates’ family members who filed as delegates are also included in the count: Jordan Wood’s husband, Jake Lipsett, and David Costello’s wife, Sally Costello.
The filings capture only who is running for a delegate seat this weekend, not how those seats will ultimately vote. Delegates are unpledged, meaning a caucus winner who wrote down no preference could still arrive at the convention ready to back any candidate, leaving room for campaigns to make their case in the days ahead.
Jackson’s operation has organized more visibly than his rivals so far. In one statement, Blake Ivers of Lewiston named the labor Democrat as his favorite, calling him best positioned to beat the Republican senator and “defend the working class.”
“We need to defend our interests against corporate greed because it is eroding our economic, physical, and mental safety,” Ivers wrote.
But with the large majority of the delegate pool still undeclared, the current tally measures which campaign has built the most public caucus operation, not who is positioned to win the nomination. Some candidates are running uncommitted campaigns in which they promise to take feedback from people in their communities.
“I shall enter the convention with an open mind and vote for the best candidate for Maine,” Tyler Harris of Lisbon wrote.