Maine Democrats formally nominated Troy Jackson for U.S. Senate on Saturday, capping a nominating process that began in chaos less than three weeks ago and ended with him cruising to the nomination.
The former Maine Senate president from Allagash won 566 of 571 delegates at a special Democratic convention at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor and will now replace Graham Platner on the ballot against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in a race that is crucial to control of the chamber.
“The billionaires keep getting richer, and Susan Collins has done everything they’ve asked for,” Jackson told the crowd, most of it standing, waving signs and cheering his name. “We have to band together and take [power].”
Jackson’s win capped a once-in-a-lifetime process that traced back to July 6, when a Maine woman told Politico that Platner sexually assaulted her in 2021, prompting state and national Democrats to call on him to leave the race. Two days later, the party’s state committee voted to replace him at a convention, and Platner formally exited the race hours later.
More than a dozen Democrats ultimately filed to replace him in a process the party built from scratch. Jackson, who finished third in the June gubernatorial primary, entered almost immediately, filing paperwork to explore a bid the day before Platner’s exit.
That run for governor was the foundation for his Senate bid. His labor ties and alliance with Platner during that primary gave him a built-in claim on the former nominee’s progressive coalition. At county caucuses last weekend, Jackson swept a solid majority of the 500 delegates elected to Saturday’s convention alongside members of the state committee.
Top rivals dropped out, including two other former gubernatorial candidates in former public health chief Nirav Shah and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. The only candidate left by Saturday’s convention was biotech CEO Saundra Pelletier, who spent the past week trying to get Maine Democrats to hear her out before what she called a “coronation.”
“I know a lot of you came supporting another candidate, and I respect that,” the Caribou native told delegates Saturday. “Today your responsibility is to pick a candidate who can defeat Susan Collins.”
A cancer survivor, Pelletier said she is a longtime fighter for women’s health care, including fighting insurance companies to get a hormone-free birth control option available through her company.
“I know how to fight,” she said. “I have had to negotiate with bullies and I’ve won time and time again.”
The race between Collins and Platner had been expected to draw $400 million in spending on ads, according to AdImpact projections. Jackson’s emergence has not changed that estimate. A University of New Hampshire poll released last week found him just ahead of Collins, a five-term Republican trying to hang onto a Democratic-leaning state in a difficult midterm election.
Jackson has seized some momentum since the caucuses, with his campaign saying it had raised $1 million by Wednesday. But it must spool up a massive effort to catch up to Collins and Republicans, who have already reserved $115 million in ads to just $57 million for Democrats, according to AdImpact.
Jackson has campaigned on a progressive platform, focused on universal health care, lower prescription drug costs and expanded child care access. He has called Immigrations and Customs Enforcement a “rogue agency” that should be abolished following an agent’s killing of a Biddeford man.
As he has on the campaign trail in recent weeks, he told delegates Saturday that Mainers “don’t need six more years” of Collins’ “concern” over the impacts of the Trump administration, including ICE actions, abortion rights and tax cuts for the wealthy.
His views shifted markedly since his early career in the Legislature representing the socially conservative St. John Valley. Jackson backed abortion restrictions and opposed gun control and same-sex marriage, but he has since become a reliable vote for abortion rights, gun control measures and LGBTQ rights.
Collins had begun sharpening her line of attack, dismissing Jackson as a “Bernie Bro” earlier in the week in a reference to his work on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. She held a Friday fundraiser in Falmouth that was headlined by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and underwritten by members of Maine’s business community.
Kristen Cianci, spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said Saturday that Jackson is a bad choice to take on Collins.
“This coronation is proof that Democrats are willing to shove socialism down the throats of Maine voters, even if it means spitting in the face of Democracy to do it,” Cianci said. “Troy Jackson is a Platner apologist, a radical Bernie Bro, and a walking red flag displaying all the warning signs of the early days of the Platner campaign. Senator Susan Collins is a proven leader with unimpeachable character who will continue to deliver for Mainers when they re-elect her this November.”
In an interview before the convention got underway, former state Rep. Deane Rykerson, D-Kittery, a Jackson delegate, said back in 2016 he and Jackson drove together to Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention. Both were delegates for independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has remained a Jackson ally.
“It was disappointing to see the national party weigh in so heavily,” Rykerson said of 2016. “I still believe we could have won that election. And Troy can win now.”