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If the Maine Democrat Party should’ve learned anything from the Graham Platner debacle, it’s that it needs to vet its candidates. Unfortunately, it looks to me like they’ve failed again with Troy Jackson.
The Platner blow-up was clear to me from a mile away, but the Democrats stuck with him until the bitter end. The Nazi tattoo should have been enough, but they essentially ignored it. His abhorrent Reddit comments about women, minorities, and veterans also should have been enough, but the Democrats disregarded all of his obvious red flags.
To top it off, many Maine Democrats played off the original sexual assault allegation against Platner as a Republican smear campaign. I guess “believe all women” doesn’t apply to conservatives.
After every new Platner scandal came to light, he always claimed to be a changed man, which brings me to Troy Jackson. According to a 1988 police report, he punched a man and pushed his longtime partner, Lana Pelletier. The Democrats seemed to try to sweep this under the rug too, and Jackson denied ever laying his hands on his partner, even though it’s literally in the police report.
Like Platner, he tried to downplay the incident and insist that he’s a changed man. That’s hard for me to believe considering the claims of his temper in the state Senate, where he threw a water bottle at a female colleague and often yelled at his peers to get his way. These accusations were not made 40 years ago, but just this decade.
Democrats clearly haven’t learned a thing.
Ben Dolloff
Dixfield