To address the situation in Maine, the Democrats have selected a lumberjack

After ten days of chaos following Graham Platner’s withdrawal from the Senate race in Maine over allegations of sexual assault, it appears the Democratic Party has chosen its candidate. He is Troy Jackson, former president of the state Senate between 2018 and 2024, who came third in this year’s primary to succeed Governor Janet Mills. His main rivals, Nirav Shah and Shenna Bellows, have suspended their campaigns due to the unexpected support Jackson has garnered amongst the delegates who will select the candidate at the state convention to be held on Saturday: both have stated that the party must be “united to win the election”. When and if he is officially nominated, Jackson will have just 101 days to campaign – fewer than Kamala Harris had against Donald Trump in 2024. Furthermore, his opponent, Republican Senator Susan Collins, has already secured $11 million, whilst he has so far raised just one. Despite this, Jackson has managed to lift the spirits of Platner’s supporters: many have become his volunteers, partly because the two share the same views on many issues: among those already mentioned are support for public healthcare, the abolition of ICE (the immigration enforcement agency whose agents killed a man in Maine a few days ago), and the belief that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Unlike Platner, however, Jackson is no outsider: he has spent two decades in state politics, representing the citizens of northern Maine. Born to a 16-year-old single mother, he has said he ‘grew up poor in a town full of poor children’. He had already made a name for himself back in 1998, whilst working as a lumberjack: he had taken part in a physical blockade of logging operations along the border between Maine and Canada, in protest against American landowners who were hiring Canadian workers to drive down wages. In 2000, he stood as a Republican candidate for the State House but lost. He tried again two years later as an independent and won, and in 2004 he joined the Democratic Party. Jackson has rarely been involved in national politics, apart from in 2016, when he was one of the delegates supporting Bernie Sanders’ unsuccessful bid against Hillary Clinton. During his campaign for governor this year, he forged a close alliance with Platner: they held campaign events together, both with the backing of Bernie Sanders, and the then Senate candidate said that Jackson would have been his first choice as governor of Maine. Despite their close ties, as soon as the allegations of violence were made, Jackson immediately called for Platner to step down.

Even today, some of his past votes continue to haunt him. In 2011, he was the only Democrat in the state Senate to vote in favour of a bill that would have granted legal status to foetuses: at the time, he received positive feedback from anti-abortion pressure groups. Later, having become a leading figure in the party within the state, he aligned himself with the rest of the Democrats on the issue, supporting various measures in favour of abortion, including a bill to increase access for low-income women. This could become a central issue in the campaign: the Democrats would like to highlight that Collins is not really a moderate Republican, as she voted to appoint many of the Supreme Court justices who subsequently overturned the federal right to abortion. However, Jackson now considers another vote to be her worst: in 2009, she voted against a bill legalising same-sex marriage. As for the economy, however, the potential new candidate was ahead of her time, addressing many of the issues that later came to the fore in Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. On the one occasion she stood for federal office – a seat in the House of Representatives (she lost in the primaries) – she criticised free trade agreements and proposed a public healthcare system. The Democrats are hoping that the new candidate can recapture the momentum that had built up around Platner: for now, the polls seem to suggest they are right, given that Jackson holds a two-point lead over Collins.