Progressive Troy Jackson Wins ME Senate Nomination

Former Senate President Troy Jackson | image: Jackson for Maine / Jacksonformaine.com

Troy Jackson will be the replacement Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine after smoking his opposition in the 16 county delegate elections held over the weekend. Jackson will take on Sen. Susan Collins as a substitute for Graham Platner on the November ballot, and he got there by leveraging Platner’s formidable organizing network to blow out his competition.

A total of 17,279 Mainers cast ballots in the race. Jackson’s slate won the majority of the vote in 15 of 16 counties, and in most counties, including the biggest (Cumberland, home to the city of Portland), his slate won every delegate. Overall, he took more than 90 percent of the delegates, according to a review by the Prospect.

More from David Dayen

Jackson, a former state senator and third-place candidate for governor this year, therefore has enough support to secure an absolute majority on the first ballot at the July 25 convention in Bangor. The 101 state committee members wouldn’t matter even if they voted as a bloc against Jackson.

Jackson’s top two opponents in the quick-strike nomination race, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and public-health official Nirav Shah, both dropped out on Sunday and endorsed Jackson. Neither of them had a path to victory, as their slates failed to secure more than a handful of votes, and a few of those who did win also appeared on Jackson’s slate.

“In November, Mainers will defeat Susan Collins, and we will take back our Senate seat from the billionaires and corporations who think they own it,” Jackson said on social media.

The progressive Jackson, who earned the support of the Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in the governor’s race, starts out $11 million behind Collins in fundraising, and that doesn’t count the $8 million in the bank from Pine Tree Results PAC, Collins’s own super PAC funded by billionaire private equity tycoons. But in a state with fewer than 900,000 registered voters, grassroots mobilization does matter. And Jackson just showed that his network has the aptitude to pull it off.

An unexpected single-location countywide caucus on a weekend in July is a unique challenge, even if it was a high-profile event inside the state. Jackson identified a delegate slate, and members of Platner’s volunteer network, which at its height numbered 15,000 across the state, swung to Jackson’s side during the quick-strike process. The two agreed on most issues and put the concerns of working families, labor, and the need for universal health care first.

Organizers in “Jackson for Maine” T-shirts left over from his gubernatorial run stormed the weekend caucuses, after making a week of phone bank calls to get supporters out. Jackson’s longtime connection to the labor movement also helped with organizing; he has the endorsement of the state AFL-CIO.

For John Kirk of Blue Hill (Hancock County) and his wife Susan, becoming a Jackson delegate was “based on his platform, his progressive track record and on the recommendation of our daughter and her friends in South Portland,” he told me over text. Kirk’s Democratic club held a straw poll early in the week and Jackson got two-thirds of the vote. Local state representative Nina Milliken and several other supporters organized the slate in conjunction with the campaign, while also collecting signatures for Jackson’s candidacy.

Outside the Hancock County meeting in Ellsworth, Kirk and others manned the table and talked to voters. “In the end it worked out,” he said. Jackson’s slate won 22 out of 23 delegates.

A large number of delegate candidates in their personal statements spoke to the need to honor the will of the voters in Maine, who gave Platner the nomination with 72 percent of the vote in June. Platner withdrew after a credible allegation of sexual assault.

The unusual circumstance created a one-week mini-campaign where television ads were nonexistent, outside groups did not exert any influence, and success was measured in grassroots muscle, getting people out to community meetings and having conversations with neighbors. Jackson’s alignment with Platner’s movement and the various forms of organization he could draw from made the contest child’s play.

Retail politics may be the only place Jackson will have an edge, given the financial disparity between the two candidates. But that can go far in a heavily dispersed state where turnout is usually pretty high. The caucuses became a test of how the candidates could reach people well below the din of campaign cash and on-air sound bites. And Jackson soared over the bar.

David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90. More by David Dayen

Portside

Progressive Troy Jackson Wins ME Senate Nomination

The North Woods logger out-organized everyone to take Graham Platner’s place. “In November, Mainers will defeat Susan Collins, and we will take back our Senate seat from the billionaires and corporations who think they own it,” Jackson said.

NYT’s Embarrassing Anti-DSA Meltdown

Did Howard Zinn Tell Too Simple a Story About American History?

Looking Back To Look Forward

Zohran Mamdani’s Public Grocery Plan Is a Serious One

A People’s Guide to the ‘Commie Corridor’ of Brooklyn and Queens