Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.
Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson opened for U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner and Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in front of 1,400 Mainers in Orono on Sunday.
Jackson’s fiery speech — built around his line that Maine’s working-class movement wasn’t from the left or the right but “from the bottom and we’re rising” — roused cheering progressives to their feet arguably more often than the other headliners.
After effectively locking down the party’s U.S. Senate nomination last month, Platner, a political newcomer who has risen from obscurity to become one of the most recognizable Democrats in the country, told a national union that he “wouldn’t be here” without Jackson.
But his gubernatorial counterpart and prototype has struggled until the most recent polling. Most surveys have shown him bunched in the middle of the five-person field behind frontrunner Nirav Shah, though Jackson tied Shah at 28% in a survey released Wednesday by the University of New Hampshire. He is the only Democratic candidate not running his own TV ads.
Jackson’s winter endorsement of Platner was reciprocated last week when the Senate hopeful said he was ranking Jackson first alongside Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former House Speaker Hannah Pingree. Bellows has split progressives with Jackson, which has diluted the coalition he needs to win. The three are now in a ranked-choice voting alliance.
“We feel at this point like we’re the only ones that can catch Shah,” Jackson said after their Tuesday news conference in Portland. “If I’m wrong, I’d like to see Hannah or Shenna.”
Jackson concedes that he has name recognition challenges despite his progressive track record over 20 years in Augusta, rising from a backbencher to Senate president. While representing the socially conservative St. John Valley, he voted with Republicans on those issues early in his career but became a reliable Democratic vote on abortion and gun rights later on.
Maine Democrats are energized against President Donald Trump this year, but sources in both parties say the high-profile Senate race has drowned out the crowded gubernatorial primaries. Jackson is heavily reliant on his labor base after lagging the field in fundraising as of last month. A group funded by unions has reserved $500,000 in ads for him, according to AdImpact.
The unsettled nature of the race is a source of hope for supporters including Maine Building and Construction Trades Council President Jason Shedlock, who said Mainers are only just beginning to pay attention to the governor’s race.
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Jackson faces “someone who’s been in everyone’s living rooms at least once a day for two years” in Shah, a statewide office holder in Bellows, a former state House speaker in Pingree who’s the daughter of a longtime congresswoman, and the son of a senator in former clean energy executive Angus King III, Shedlock said.
“The more people know about him, the exponentially better he does,” Shedlock said. “What we’re seeing is, his message may not be the most poll-tested, polished message, but it’s authentic.”
Jackson disputed the findings of a survey released last week showing him in a distant third place behind Shah and King. Then came this week’s UNH poll, marking major improvement for Jackson since the university’s poll in February had him in third place behind Shah and Bellows.
Platner was recruited to run for Senate in part by unions who were frustrated with the more moderate Mills. But Maine progressives have not consolidated behind one gubernatorial candidate. Labor generally backs Jackson, Pingree has environmental groups and Bellows is backed by the progressive Maine People’s Alliance.
At a recent meeting of that group at Food AND Medicine, a labor-aligned Brewer nonprofit where Jackson once worked, Gabrielle Wiley said she was grateful for ranked-choice voting because she couldn’t choose between Jackson and Bellows, citing their pushes for investments in education, healthcare and protecting the environment.
“They have a lot of experience, and both of their platforms speak to the needs of people,” she said.
Wiley said “one of the obstacles” for Jackson’s campaign may be that he’s not as polished as other candidates. But his working-class messaging resonates across the political spectrum more than some of his opponents’, she said.
“If you get out on the doors, if you get out on the street … it’s Jackson one, Bellows two, or Bellows one, Jackson two,” Brendan Davison, an MPA organizer, said. “They actually have some blood coursing through their veins.”
