Maine Democrats are so desperate to replace accused rapist Graham Platner with another rugged “working-class hero” type that the left wing has thrown its support behind an Allagash logger – despite a past that’s anything but progressive.
Platner formally withdrew from the race for US Senate Friday after Maine woman Jenny Racicot accused him of drunkenly raping her in 2021 — clearing the way for another contender to replace him on the ballot against Republican Susan Collins in the November midterms.
The race is key to which party will control the Senate.
Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and longtime union member, who served as president of the Maine Senate from 2018 to 2024, looks like the natural successor to Platner — at least on the surface.
“He was a logger by trade so he’s got that Maine log man in him,” said former political operative Kurt Bardella, who has advised members of both major parties.
“I think you’re going to start seeing a real coalescing behind Troy Jackson,” he told News Nation. “If they don’t get this one right, they’re toast, they’re cooked, they’re not going to win.”
Jackson, 58, campaigned with both Platner and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on the “Fighting the Oligarchy” tour at the University of Maine in May. He is a longtime ally of the Vermont socialist, having been one of the few Democratic National Committee superdelegates to endorse him over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
This week, the political organization founded by Sanders after his unsuccessful 2016 presidential run, Our Revolution, said it was throwing its “full organizing machine” behind Jackson’s senate bid, stating he “spent his life in the fight working people are asking for.”
He was also endorsed by lefty heavyweight Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who was one of Platner’s top backers in Congress.
But despite sharing Platner’s left-wing populism on economic issues — and having been one of his loudest cheerleaders — Jackson’s political record includes a longtime conversative streak on social matters.
He first rose to political prominence in 1998 by leading a blockade against Canadian workers along the border and has been accused by critics inside the party of pushing GOP-like anti-immigrant and nationalist rhetoric.
In fact, Jackson launched his career as a Republican when he first ran for the Maine legislature in 2000. After losing, he tried again in 2002, but as Independent. In 2004 he morphed again and became a Dem.
But even after that, some of his positions remained very much right of center. In 2009 he voted against same-sex marriage in the Maine Senate and has long thought abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape or incest — even when the mother’s life is in danger.
In 2011, he voted for a state bill that would have declared a fetus a person and in 2013, for mandatory abortion-counseling legislation. Jackson only reversed his views in the last decade, chalking up his earlier positions to his Catholic upbringing.
Until recently he’s continued to bash Canadian workers, whining that he’s “seen countless foreign loggers cross the border every single day to work in our forests” and authoring legislation in 2022 restricting them from coming to the state even though they had legal work permits.
Even after a federal judge blocked it, saying it “is not a constitutional means of addressing” concerns about foreign workers, he vowed to continue fighting.
“No other state allows this in any occupation. It’s only Maine,” he proclaimed. “I feel strongly about just suing the Department of Labor.”
After the Democrats lost Congress and the White House in the 2024 elections, the party’s desire to win back young white men led them to the poorly vetted Platner — who was described by GQ as a “virile, earthy working man” who could win back Trump voters. The Guardian said his aesthetic “seemed to give Democrats the blue-collar cred and performative masculinity they craved.”
In Jackson, they see another way to capitalize on working-man man vibes.
Even the Daily Show poked fun at the obvious pattern Thursday, quipping that “it seems Democratic consultants just want someone stereotypically masculine instead of, you know, someone who’s actually good.”
