A vote for Troy Jackson will help restore American democracy | Opinion
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Janice Cooper represented the towns of Yarmouth, Chebeague Island and Long Island in the Maine House from 2012 to 2020. She now serves as a councilor on Yarmouth’s Town Council. Previously, she worked as a congressional staffer in Washington and Portland.
Like many, if not most, Americans, I have been utterly gutted and disheartened by President Trump’s authoritarian, chaotic and cruel actions, particularly in his second term — not that the first term was a model of anything good.
Equally distressing has been the inability of the Democratic Party establishment to mount an effective, compelling response to Trump’s destruction of centuries of American principles and practices. Recently, however, hope is emerging, and one of its messengers is Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from Allagash.
His message is not the wonky policy positions that have little chance of enactment. Instead, he directly challenges the basic flaw of America today: the massive flow of wealth from ordinary citizens to the already disgustingly rich who control the media, the stock market, the corporations and every other economic and societal power center.
This shift has been the carefully planned goal and strategy of the Republican Party for decades, accomplished under our noses. The wealthy got enormously richer, and the rest of us are struggling to buy food, gas, homes and healthcare. We are poorer than our parents.
I knew Troy as a fellow Democratic state legislator while I served in the Maine Legislature. Despite his rough edges and occasional temper tantrums (or maybe because of his lack of polish), he was repeatedly elected to the Senate presidency, based on his political skills, honesty and reliability. His colleagues respected him, as did his normally Republican-leaning hard-working, no-nonsense constituents.
His journey to be the candidate to oppose Sen. Susan Collins was unpredictable. His replacement of the oysterman from Sullivan, Graham Platner, reads like a beach novel set in Maine’s backwoods. Yet it is utterly true and compelling.
Platner initially captivated me and many others with his charismatic presence and compelling message of ousting the disgustingly wealthy oligarchs who have taken over our economy and government. We belatedly learned that he had betrayed us with his buried skeletons of disgraceful sexual misconduct.
Troy is no phony. He did not go to a boarding school. His father is not a lawyer, nor his grandfather a well-heeled architect. His roots are authentically working class from The County; his family has long toiled as back-breaking fellers of giant trees in the northern forests. This is as physically hard as it gets, and his understanding of the exploitation of the working class flows from his and his forefathers’ experience. He began his political career with his well-earned fierce opposition to the forces that sought to decimate his fellow American loggers by the profit-driven importation of Canadian loggers and exportation of our timber.
Only a direct attack on the massive shift of wealth and power in this country will save us from the fate of Russia and other authoritarian countries. When I was growing up, we were a nation of middle class workers, whose corporate leaders earned maybe 10 times that of workers, not 100 or more times.
This wealth shift changes everything: our government priorities, our feelings of repression, our powerlessness. It is not beyond our control to restore a more equitable society. If we expel the tyrants, we can restore our democracy. All it takes is voting, and fighting to ensure that our votes are counted. Not a big ask.
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Tagged: columns, election 2026, senate 2026
