Maine’s US Senate race was blown wide open by Graham Platner dropping out. Thankfully, a suitable populist is at hand to fill the breach. His name is Troy Jackson.
Jackson was born to a 16-year-old mother in the northern Maine town of Fort Kent. He is a fifth-generation logger, union member and former state legislator. As a teenager himself, he went to work in the woods, and by 1998 he led a union logging blockade to prevent Canadian scabs from working Maine jobs.
In other words, he was on the frontlines as globalization devastated rural communities like his. He’s spent his life in the tradition of the New Deal, as one of those rare labor Democrats who have kept that spirit alive.
In 2016, he was among a handful of Democratic superdelegates brave enough to support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. In fact, before Platner became a political sensation, it was Jackson who was the Pine Tree state’s populist standard bearer.
Affectionately known as “Johnny Cash from Allagash”, Jackson fought against multinational corporations and their enablers in government. Not only does he embrace a robust progressive economic program, but as a logger he understands, in a visceral way, the meaning of work and working-class life in Maine.
On soapboxes, he recounts stories of watching his father be ordered back to work on the pain of unemployment after a strike. He talks about the humiliation that comes with powerlessness in the face of big-business interests. And how rural workers have lost their sense of self-worth and personal esteem at the hands of a rapacious corporate and political elite.
It isn’t just about the wage stagnation, argues Jackson, but the tragedy of “losing that pride, that self-respect” when big employers offshore work, “insource” scab labor to drive down standards or close down mills because an anonymous besuited boardroom deems labor “costs” too high.
He gets working-class life in Maine better than most Democratic leaders. That matters because Maine is a working-class state. Only 36% of Mainers have a college degree, lower than the national average, and most educated voters are concentrated around coastal Portland.
Jackson’s home district, meanwhile, sits in the rural St John valley – where only about 25% have a college degree. Over the years, his neighbors have politically drifted to the right. Yet, Jackson has continued to win them over.
Serving in state government since 2002 and winning election after election, he’s demonstrated his capacity for speaking to the “left behind” regions. Even in 2022, he won his state senate seat handily, with 52.5% of the vote. An impressive result in a region Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024.
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Add to this the union factor. Jackson is a longtime union member and deeply involved with the state’s labor federation. He won a slew of union endorsements in his bid for governor, and he would surely win their support in a Senate bid.
These are worth more than just the letterhead they’re printed on because the Maine AFL-CIO happens to be one of only a handful of federations across the country that runs member-to-member political mobilization campaigns for union-bred, union-backed candidates. That’s a huge advantage in an age when the Democratic party’s own on-the-ground organization is virtually absent across rural counties.
The primary campaign proved that a populist program is popular. That program remains the key to winning this seat and revitalizing the Democratic party more broadly.
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At this late stage, it’s going to be difficult to win against Susan Collins, who seems far more formidable today than she did a few weeks ago. Still, to do so, Democrats need a candidate who can speak to working-class, inland and rural Mainers.
A logger from the North Woods seems like the obvious choice.
