Politics
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Frequent flyers in newspaper comment sections often muse about the identities of their opponents, be they local cranks or thin-skinned politicians, during spirited verbal jousts.
Wading into the online fray under Bangor Daily News articles back in 2012 was future Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson, the man behind the no-longer anonymous handle “Canadians for LePage,” according to CNN.
CNN linked Jackson, who has replaced Graham Platner on this November’s ballot, to the account via the email jacksonforsenate@hotmail.com. That email address was used in campaign materials, internal Democratic Party documents and financial disclosure records, CNN reported.
The email was among the user credentials leaked after a 2012 data breach at Disqus, which didn’t acknowledge the breach occurred until 2017. Disqus hosted comments for the BDN. About 24 of his comments remain archived online, according to CNN, but since the BDN stopped using Disqus back in 2019, the context for those comments has been lost.
Under that handle, Jackson adopted the persona of a Canadian logger supportive of then-Gov. Paul LePage, who in 2011 vetoed a Jackson-sponsored bill to ban foreign loggers from cutting wood on public lands. LePage cited concerns about the bill’s constitutionality, and the Legislature upheld that veto.
It’s a sensitive issue for Jackson, a former logger who emerged into the public eye back in 1998 when he helped organize a blockade to protest the hiring of cheaper Canadian labor on this side of the border.
Responding to news that LePage was withholding voter approved bonds, “Canadians for LePage” dismissed concerns about the governor’s action so long as “he approves my H-2 bond so I can come to Maine and cut wood,” an allusion back to the 2011 veto.
But the purported Canadian LePage supporter also dished out criticism of the governor. When LePage’s administration proposed sweeping changes to the unemployment system to address fraudulent claims, Jackson’s alias accused LePage of exaggerating the problem, according to CNN.
“This is another red herring by my countryman, Paul LePage,” Jackson wrote in an apparent reference to the Republican’s time living in Canada in the 1970s.
Jackson’s anonymous online postings may give Democrats deja vu after Platner was dogged by criticism of his posting habit on the website Reddit, including inflammatory statements about rural white people, lobstermen, police and Black people and comments dismissive of women’s fears of rape. But CNN noted that most of Jackson’s surviving posts under the “Canadians for LePage” handle fall under the category of “political trash talk.”
Under one BDN article about LePage’s line-item vetoes for the 2012 supplemental budget, “Canadians for LePage” trolled another commenter, writing: “Could you stop making pipe bombs in your basement, and send me your Communist manifesto. I have to see if you are making this up or reading from something insane.”
While he let loose volleys behind the keyboard, Jackson also feuded publicly with LePage.
The most infamous episode in the LePage-Jackson feud came in 2013 when LePage said Jackson had a “black heart” and that the Democratic state senator gives it to Mainers “without providing Vaseline.”
The governor, who made his remarks to reporters at the State House, went on to say that Jackson should go back into the woods and “let someone with a brain come down here and do some good work.”
Jackson largely brushed off those comments, telling a BDN reporter that: “I don’t have any problem with anyone saying anything about what I stand for. He can say whatever he wants; I just think it’s inappropriate the way he said it. We can be disagreeable without making nasty comments like that.”
On Saturday, Jackson was officially nominated to be his party’s champion in its bid to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. That came after Jackson effectively clinched the nomination following his sweep of county delegate election meetings the weekend before, securing pledges from more than 450 delegates.
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Since then, Democrats have been flooding Jackson with cash to bolster his campaign, which has just over three months to make his case to voters. A recent University of New Hampshire poll gave Jackson a slight edge over Collins in a theoretical matchup, with 2% of voters still undecided.
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 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.