Susan Collins

For all the turmoil afflicting Maine Democrats following the implosion of Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy, they moved quickly and decisively to choose a replacement to take on Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November. In the initial rounds of the process leading up to a nominating convention, former legislative leader and labor stalwart Troy Jackson did so overwhelmingly well that his major opponents promptly dropped out, as CBS News reported:

Jackson effectively locked up the nomination during the delegate selection elections over the weekend after candidates on his endorsed slate won a majority of the 601 delegate slots that will determine the nominee. And while Jackson’s endorsed slate of candidates aren’t legally bound to vote for him at the [July 25] nominating convention, they’re widely expected to come through for the fifth-generation logger. …

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced she was dropping out of the race Sunday, followed by former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Nirav Shah, Maine Beer Company co-founder Dan Kleban and former Senate and House hopeful Jordan Wood, as the candidates encouraged Democrats to come together to defeat GOP Sen. Susan Collins in November.

Jackson is a long-time Bernie Sanders supporter whose strong backing from the progressive senator from next-door Vermont and his own left-labor credentials made him the natural inheritor of the more ideologically oriented Platner supporters. Unlike Platner, however, he is a very familiar figure on the Maine political scene, having served in the legislature for a cumulative 20 years and in the labor movement for much longer. And whatever weaknesses he and his organization showed during his recent gubernatorial campaign (in which he finished a close third and was then eliminated in ranked-choice voting in favor of Hannah Pingree) wasn’t a problem in this high-speed and largely improvised Senate nomination contest. As Jackson said in a tribute to his supporters, “you just smoked it.”

The rough-hewn Jackson isn’t credited with the charisma and communications skills that made Platner a political sensation until his background caught up with him. But no one doubts his authentic working-class credentials as a logger and union activist or the enthusiasm he has commanded as Platner’s successor. He should begin the general election campaign with a reasonably united Democratic Party, though Republicans and Collins herself will surely describe him as a left-wing extremist (he is not, to be clear, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, though he has adopted such typical progressive positions as support for Medicare For All and opposition to military aid to Israel). As the Bangor Daily News reports, initial signs suggest a close Jackson-Collins race:

The polling picture is tight. One poll released early this month had him trailing Collins by a point. A SurveyUSA poll taken last week found him a point ahead. Sabato’s Crystal Ball is holding the race at a toss-up rating, writing that the Democratic caucuses were likely to help them land a “less damaged” nominee than Platner — “although that is a low bar.”

Jackson and Collins are from the same neck of the woods: Aroostook County, the large (area-wise) rural county bordering Canada. The Democrat’s relative ability to cut into Collins’ margin in Republican areas like Asroostook could be crucial to his success. And more generally, Democrats hope that after the long and painful Platner saga, they can keep the focus on the incumbent and her role in the Senate as crucial if ostensibly independent cog in the GOP majority that has given Donald Trump so much power.