David Wood serves as the interim senior minister of the First Congregational Church of Camden. His son, Jordan Wood, was a candidate seeking the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate.
Is it just me or does the supposed locked-up nomination of Troy Jackson to be the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate feel less like a “coronation” and more like capitulation to machine-style politics?
What happened to the open, fair, and deliberative process leading up to and including the convention that is to take place this Saturday? We were guaranteed an open process in which voters would be able to assess the candidates in town halls, public debates (on both local and national television) culminating in a convention in which the leading candidates would make their final appeals to uncommitted delegates. That sounds like the essence of democratic process.
Instead, I believe we experienced machine politics running roughshod over what was intended to be an open, fair, deliberative democratic process. There is no question that Jackson was able to harness the volunteer force of the defunct Graham Platner campaign and his losing gubernatorial campaign and essentially take over the county caucuses.
I attended the Lincoln County caucus and experienced it as a wonderful expression of local democracy at work. All the Senate candidates were milling around talking one on one with delegate candidates and others in attendance. I was a delegate candidate and several people approached me to hear my pitch. They were earnestly doing their best to discern which delegate they should vote for. While interested in who I favored, they seemed more interested in hearing that I was open to voting for whomever emerged as the best candidate.
However, by the next day it became evident to me that the “open” process had been hijacked, exploited, and short-circuited by a deliberate and well-organized force to foreclose the democratic process. By Sunday night, a full week before the convention, all the leading candidates, save one, were dropping out. What choice did they have? They had no path to the nomination.
As Jackson’s campaign bragged to the media — and the media uncritically broadcast to the rest of us — he had more than 90% of the delegates to Saturday’s convention committed to vote for him. If the other candidates failed to step aside, I think they would be charged (fueled by the same machine that was handing the nomination to Jackson) with creating chaos and disunity and thereby jeopardizing our ability to defeat Sen. Susan Collins.
Over this past week, I thought we were unified — but not behind a single candidate. We were unified by a trust in the promise of the Maine Democratic Party that there would be a fair and open deliberative process that would, as accurately as possible, reflect the will of Maine’s Democratic voters.
So here we are, on the verge of nominating a candidate who I think performed poorly in the first televised debate, who came in third in Maine’s governor’s race, and who has the implicit endorsement of Platner’s failed campaign — a fact that Republicans will surely exploit. And this is a winning ticket?
What about Nirav Shah? Shah was perhaps the top performer in the first, and now only, debate among the Democratic Senate candidates. I think he most certainly out performed Jackson.
Shah beat Jackson by more than 25,000 votes in a statewide race just weeks ago. He has demonstrated wide support among Maine voters. The truth of the matter is that we had four leading candidates to consider: Troy Jackson, Nirav Shah, Shenna Bellows, and Jordan Wood. All four received over 20% of the vote in their respective ranked-choice primaries, all four demonstrated ability to run viable campaigns and appeal to a broad base of support.
But we will not get to critically assess a Jackson versus a Shah or a Wood or a Bellows candidacy because I believe a political machine robbed the people of Maine of that opportunity.
Shame on those we trusted to create a fair and democratic process to resolve this crisis. What we got over the weekend was a capitulation by the Maine Democratic Party to a machine-style politics clearly rejected in the June primary.