Politics
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Troy Jackson is poised to become the Democratic Party’s new champion to take on U.S. Sen. Susan Collins this fall.
Abortion rights have figured prominently in many of the ads targeting Collins, whose votes to confirm Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, have drawn strong ire and contributed to her weakening cross-party appeal.
Jackson, who spent six years as the Maine Senate president, has a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood’s Maine chapter, as well as from Equality Maine, a gay rights group.
But the former logger from Allagash has not always held views on abortion and gay rights that align with today’s Democratic Party, according to a New York Times review of his record.
His political ambitions date back to the late 1990s after Jackson helped organize a blockade to protest the hiring of cheaper Canadian labor on this side of the border. He ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the Legislature in 2000. Two years later, he ran as an independent and unseated the Democratic incumbent for House District 151. Two years after that, Jackson called the Democratic Party home while still holding more socially conservative views.
In 2003 and 2010, Jackson was given perfect marks by the anti-abortion group Maine Right to Life. He supported a “fetal personhood” bill in 2011 — though six years later, he opposed a very similar measure — and a 24-hour waiting period before abortion procedures.
Jackson, who grew up Catholic, acknowledged in an interview with The Times that his views on abortion have been “conflicted.” Even in 2022, he told Maine Public that he continued to personally struggle with abortion.
“Regardless of this U.S. Senate race, I’m really, really proud of how I’ve turned that around and, you know, done the right thing. I mean, I was wrong,” Jackson told The Times.
But Jackson said his “worst vote ever” came in 2009 when he voted against legalizing same-sex marriage. That measure still passed only to be overturned by a people’s veto. In 2012, Maine voters reinstated legal same-sex marriage via referendum.
During the weekend county nomination meetings, Jackson flexed his organizing muscle to secure pledges from more than 450 of the 500 delegates nominated for this Saturday’s unprecedented party convention in Bangor, where 601 delegates will pick Graham Platner’s replacement.
Already Jackson’s biggest rivals, including Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former Maine public health chief Nirav Shah, Maine Beer Co. co-founder Dan Kleban and former 2nd Congressional District candidate Jordan Wood, have bowed out of the race.
Party members lining up behind Jackson see him as a natural heir to Platner, whose outsider campaign and working-class-style politics ignited the Democratic base. Jackson has a track record of winning races in the St. John Valley, a former Democratic stronghold that’s now deep red, and a history of fighting for pro-labor policies.
As The Times reported, Jackson is leaning more into his longstanding economic populism than social issues.
It will be an uphill battle for Democrats to unseat Collins, who officially announced her historic bid for a sixth term in February. The Republican has handily beaten back challengers, including in 2020 when she defied polls and expectations to secure a fifth term in the Senate. But Collins, who has been ranked the country’s most bipartisan senator, has seen her popularity slump since Republican President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House.
If Collins is successful in winning a sixth term, she would be Maine’s longest-serving U.S. senator.