Washington — The crowded Maine Senate race to replace Graham Platner narrowed as Democrats rallied around former state Senate President Troy Jackson in the leadup to the party’s nominating convention this Saturday.
After Maine counties held nomination meetings to select delegates over the weekend, a handful of candidates opted to drop out of the race amid wide-reaching victories for Jackson’s preferred slate. 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.
“Democrats don’t have a day to waste in unifying around that shared goal,” Bellows said in a statement.
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 June 25 nominating convention, they’re widely expected to come through for the fifth-generation logger.
“I’ve been getting text messages all day about what a great job I did, and I didn’t do a god damn thing. All of you just smoked it,” Jackson told organizers in a Facebook video over the weekend.
Jackson, 58, has been active in Maine politics since 2002, when he began serving in the Maine House of Representatives before moving on to the state Senate, where he was president from 2018 to 2024. Before entering the race for U.S. Senate, Jackson had pursued the governor’s mansion, coming in third in the Democratic primary earlier this year. The self-described “pickup truck progressive” has long ties to independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, after working on his 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders and Platner had backed Jackson’s unsuccessful gubernatorial bid. Platner has not issued an endorsement in race to replace him on the ballot.
Jackson’s policy positions are in line with Sanders and progressives: he supports Medicare for All and a tax on billionaires, he’s called for ICE to be abolished, and he believes Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza and that no more U.S. dollars should be sent to support Israel’s military.
With the victories across Jackson’s preferred delegate slate, other candidates were left with little hope of breaking through. Kleban said that it had “become clear from the county nominating meetings that we lack a path forward.”
Maine Democrats have been racing to select a new nominee following Platner’s departure from the race after a woman accused him of sexual assault earlier this month. Under Maine law, the state party has until July 27 to select a new nominee, opting to hold a nominating convention to choose the new candidate with input from Mainers.
During his gubernatorial run, Jackson would often appear on the campaign trail with Platner whenever Sanders or Rep. Ro Khanna came to town.
“Up until today, I’ve been the only candidate who actually came out and supported Graham Platner,” Jackson said during a gubernatorial debate in May. “I came out and supported Graham because I wanted somebody to change the system in D.C.”
After the allegation against Platner came out, which Platner denies, Jackson called for him to drop out of the race. “He lied to me, he lied to a lot of us,” Jackson said on MSNOW earlier this month.
For Jackson, the sprint that began with Platner’s withdrawal from the race will continue over the coming weeks, as Democrats prepare to take on Collins in less than four months.
As the sole Senate Republican seeking reelection in a state that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, Democrats see the race as a key prize in November. But Collins has survived multiple challenges to reelection in her nearly three decades in the Senate, and the late entrance into the race could pose challenges for Democrats.
With 53 Republicans in the Senate, Democrats would have to flip four seats, while defending a handful of others, to take control of the upper chamber — an outcome that would be all the more difficult without Maine.
