Democrats have undemocratically replaced an awful Senate candidate in Maine with someone who seems to be an okay candidate, possibly giving them a better chance of picking up a seat in November. Troy Jackson has won a bunch of elections, serving multiple terms in both houses of the state legislature, though he’s also lost quite a few. He’s been pretty good at the practical work of getting bills passed.
Most significantly, Jackson really is the things that Graham Platner was cosplaying: He’s a logger and union guy who became a public figure as a leader in a 1998 blockade to keep Canadian labor out of Maine’s lumber industry, on the premise that foreign labor competition drives down American wages. Build the wall, eh?
Representing majority-Republican legislative districts as an independent, and then as a Democrat, Jackson has a long track record of at least some not-entirely-insane legislation. He’s a rural Democrat of the pre-trans era, authoring bills like “An Act To Ensure the Maintenance of Veterans’ Cemeteries” and a bill to expand access to hunting licenses for disabled hunters. That flannel-shirt-and-tattoos thing that Platner played at is what Jackson has actually been.
With that said, Jackson is unambiguously a leftist, and the first ad in his failed campaign for governor proudly declared that he was “the only Democrat for Governor endorsed by Bernie Sanders.”
The Portland Press-Herald offers a decent list of his top legislative priorities, and it’s all the usual: more free stuff from the government, more abortions, guns are bad. Jackson first ran for office (a long time ago) as a Republican, and postured as a centrist on social issues for years. As the Portland newspaper notes, his anti-gun votes in the Maine Senate represented “another leftward shift in his political evolution.”
Evaluating Jackson’s character in interesting language, the former Maine Gov. Paul LePage once called him a series of names we won’t repeat, describing Jackson as a black-hearted socialist, but his comments also included a reference to Vaseline. Use your imagination.
Jackson has twenty years of success in Maine elections, and he actually has a real version of the “working class” background that Democrats have been trying to cast like they’re choosing actors for the school play. Watching him handle a chainsaw in a campaign ad isn’t like watching Tim Walz touch a shotgun.
Reports that Jackson has a “fiery temper” offer details like this: “Jackson was also involved in an intense discussion with former state Sen. Heather Sanborn (D) over legislation geared towards reducing prescription drug costs. He apparently threw a water bottle at one point in the argument.” But he’s probably not the first elected official who’s ever yelled at someone.
With the sexual assault allegations and totenkopf tattoo off the table, Susan Collins has at least a slightly harder task ahead of her. Troy Jackson should be solidly adequate as an opponent.
