AOC tells voters Troy Jackson will get billionaire influence out of politics
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., joins Troy Jackson on Thursday for a More Perfect University "Students vs. Billionaires" town hall at the State Theatre in Portland. (Derek Davis/Staff Photographer)
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PORTLAND — Onstage at the State Theater, before a lively crowd, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly said the best antidote to the influence of the ruling class in Washington would be to elect Troy Jackson to the U.S. Senate.
“They’ve been afraid of a waitress in the House, and a logger in the United States Senate,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “So they want to critique how he talks, how he looks, the way he says things. Because if you’re not one of them, they at least want you to act like you are.”
The New York congresswoman, one of the most prominent members of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, came to Portland on Thursday — less than two weeks before voters will decide between Jackson and Sen. Susan Collins — for an event billed as a students vs. billionaires town hall.
“When you have someone like Troy go to the United States Senate and call everything for what it is, it disrupts and makes it harder for everyone to get away with all the glad-handing that goes on over there,” she said.
The latest polls show Jackson leading slightly in a tight race against Collins, a five-term incumbent.
For a bit more than an hour, Ocasio-Cortez and Jackson took questions from local high school and college students, tackling topics from AI regulation to student debt to rural labor and delivery centers. While Ocasio-Cortez did most of the talking, bringing the crowd to its feet several times, Jackson cemented his stances on healthcare, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. aid for Israel.
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Jackson said his first actions — were Democrats to take back the Senate — would be repealing President Donald Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act to restore billions in Medicaid funding, then to push for Medicare for All.
He called for no more “blank checks to (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu,” for the abolition of ICE, and for an end to stock trading by members of Congress.
In response to a question from a Portland High School student about pitching progressive policies like Medicare for All to more rural or conservative communities in Maine, Jackson said people would get on board if presented with the facts.
“I just think we have to get the greed out of our healthcare system,” Jackson said. “It’s just taking the time to explain to people that you’re not going to get bad insurance, you’re going to get awesome insurance, and that we can do it, just don’t let these billionaires tell us differently.”
Both Ocasio-Cortez and Jackson delivered hits on Collins, especially on her voting record and her personal finances. Ocasio-Cortez told audience member Leah Hurwitz, an advocate against the closure of rural labor and delivery units, that Collins paved the way for hundreds of billions in healthcare cuts around the country by supporting the procedural motion to advance the Big Beautiful Bill to the floor. (Collins later voted against the bill, and she’s argued her procedural vote did nothing to affect its eventual passage.)
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Hurwitz had asked about what could be done to stop the loss of maternal healthcare centers in the state. She said after the event that Ocasio-Cortez’s answer was a good open-ended response, but she was looking for more concrete solutions to bring back delivery services to rural communities that have lost them. She had a baby about 11 months ago at Lincoln Hospital, who was born breech. That hospital’s birthing center is now set to close by the end of the year.
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Leah Hurwitz asks Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson about maternal healthcare ward closures during a More Perfect University “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall at the State Theatre in Portland on Thursday. (Derek Davis/Staff Photographer) Purchase this image
“I know better than most,” she said. “Minutes mattered in my situation”
In response to a Bowdoin student’s question about how Jackson would stay in touch with Mainers from Washington, he criticized Collins’ reluctance to hold town hall events in the state, calling it “a major failing” of her tenure.
“It’s no secret that I’ve changed my opinion on a number of major issues,” Jackson said, alluding to his history of, among other things, opposing abortion. “I was presented with people who had better information, really made me think critically about where I was, and that I wouldn’t have gotten if I wasn’t willing to take the hard questions, go out and hear from people.”
In a race that could be decided by a small number of moderate swing voters, Republicans have attacked Jackson for courting national progressive heroes like Ocasio-Cortez; Bernie Sanders, who attended a Lewiston rally earlier this month; and Elizabeth Warren, who was in Portland over the weekend at a No Kings protest.
The town hall came one day after Collins emphasized her bipartisan credentials by hosting former Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for lunch at a Lewiston hot dog stand.
Manchin, an old friend of Collins’ who left the Democratic Party in 2024, emphasized to reporters after their meal that Collins is “the most independent-minded person” he has ever met and described her as not a “Trump senator.”
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On Wednesday, Maine GOP Chairman Jim Deyermond held a news conference criticizing Ocasio-Cortez’s visit to the state and Jackson’s alliance with her.
“AOC is far outside the mainstream of Maine politics. She is very, very far left, ” Deyermond said. “And that’s who Jackson is campaigning with here in Maine.”
Ocasio-Cortez and Jackson at the “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall at the State Theatre in Portland on Thursday. (Staff photo by Derek Davis) Purchase this image
It didn’t take long for Ocasio-Cortez to point out that sentiment herself at Thursday’s event. There are a lot of consultants in Washington that would tell Jackson not to sit on a stage next her, she said.
“It takes a lot to say, ‘You know what, I know my people, I know who I am, and I’m going to do things my way,”‘ Ocasio-Cortez said. “So thank you, Troy.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to sit alongside of someone who just talked like that,” Jackson said a few minutes later, after Ocasio-Cortez gave an impassioned response about military spending and domestic affordability.
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Tagged: election 2026, Susan Collins, Troy Jackson
Riley covers education for the Press Herald. Before moving to Portland, she spent two years in Kenai, Alaska, reporting on local government, schools and natural resources for the public radio station KDLL. More by Riley Board
