Does Troy Jackson stand a chance against Susan Collins? | Opinion

Sam Patten has worked for Maine’s last three Republican senators, including Susan Collins’ first electoral campaigns, is a former managing editor of The Maine Wire and is the author of “Dangerous Company: The Misadventures of a Foreign Agent.”

Which is more important, the person or the idea? Historians have argued over the question for centuries, but in a more future-focused context it might also apply to who will win Maine’s U.S. Senate race in just over two months from now.

For those keeping score, the candidacy of incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, is based on her personhood while the hopes of newly minted Democratic challenger Troy Jackson for victory depend entirely on an idea.

“This guy’s your worst nightmare politically, Sean,” former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio told Fox News’ Hannity last week. “He’s a lumberjack. He’s a Catholic guy from Northern Maine who fought for working people. He’s gonna win that race.”

Faithful though he may be to his talking points, de Blasio has never been credibly accused of being a soothsayer. With summer drawing to a close, our days of listening reverentially to New Yorkers are dwindling too.

But Fox’s latest poll does peg Jackson two points above Collins — for now. One might
wonder whether that’s just his starting position or his high-water mark.

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As an idea, there’s something appealing about Jackson, aka the Johnny Cash of the Allagash. No Cicero he, but a sturdy fellow from a humble background who stands with the working man. The trade unions have his back, and he pledges to have yours.

Yet so far, that’s all there is.

It’s been nearly three weeks since Maine Democrats anointed Jackson the nominee in the wake of elected nominee Graham Platner’s headline-grabbing campaign implosion. All we’ve heard from the Jackson campaign in this period have been denials that he pushed around his lifelong domestic partner 40 years ago.

People who know say Jackson is waiting for Labor Day — the working man’s holiday, after all — to kick off his campaign in earnest. Last Labor Day, nearly a year ago, I was there amongst some 7,000 other souls in Portland when Jackson and Platner shared a stage with Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

While the distribution of Jackson signage in the Cross Insurance Arena far outpowered the then-nascent Platner campaign’s, when the respective candidates took to the podium it was the newbie oyster farmer who blew the logger, with nearly a quarter century’s experience in Augusta, out of the water.

What I wrote at the time must have reflected how awe-struck I was then at Platner’s presentation, because Collins’ press secretary later called to complain I hadn’t been
nearly critical enough of him.

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Susan Collins doesn’t fare well as an idea. Once there was the Bill Cohen prototype of an independent Republican willing to buck his own president on matters of principle, but that day is long gone.

Sure, Collins has opposed Donald Trump on various issues and even voted to impeach him once, but for the Never Trumpers there is no such thing as enough. One can even quibble about her defiant votes as being merely performative, cast when a safe majority was already secured for the administration.

And the Trump Republican brand sells poorly in the more populated areas of Maine. Even before the taint of corruption, high gas prices spurred by a war almost no one wants and an economy that hasn’t rebounded from the Biden years are taken into account, its stock here was low. That is why tacking back to the party label as an overarching idea isn’t really an option for her.

That is also why Collins the person matters.

After nearly three decades in office, she just may have touched enough lives for the better in Maine for her to clinch a sixth term in the Senate. In this respect, her role as one of the holders of the purse strings in Congress helps a lot. Her personal influence in Washington matters, regardless of how angry at her one might be. And if she loses, it will also be because her relationships were not as strong as she’d hoped.

This week, Collins kicked off her “All of Maine” bus tour, which is presented as the kind
of retail politics critics like Platner accused her of avoiding over much of the past year, and decade without a town hall-style meeting with constituents.

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Jackson, who in all fairness is playing a daunting game of catch-up, debuted his biography television ad, which hits the right notes.

Still, one might ask, what else has he been up to?

Pollsters tend to discount results of surveys conducted in August because it is basically
the silly month public opinion-wise. That is one explanation for Jackson’s two-point lead.
The other is that is the best he’ll ever get. The grinding weeks ahead will chip mercilessly away at this narrow advantage, one can safely guess.

Waiting until September to make the case for firing a longtime incumbent is a risky strategy for one who just happened into the nomination in July. But the odds for a Jackson win are long whichever way you cut it.

It will take both a persuasive idea and a methodical prosecution of his opponent’s ineffectiveness on key points (Bret Kavanaugh’s pledge to hold Roe v. Wade as established law or ICE deploying the bodycams for which she appropriated funds) to make Jackson a U.S. senator. These require a radical uptick in activity and allow no room for error.

Like Platner, Jackson is all about an idea: economic justice. The race could be the matchup between this idea, skillfully and energetically sold, versus a person who is pragmatic at her core and deemed to be still essential. Or it could fizzle into a nothingburger.

Let’s see if, as Mainers, we actually get the kind of race we deserve. The clock is ticking.

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Tagged: columns, election 2026, senate 2026