Maine's newly anointed Democratic Senate nominee wished "nothing would have happened" to his predecessor, Graham Platner, whose campaign was torpedoed by sexual assault allegations last month.
Troy Jackson, a former logger and Maine state Senate president, slid into the role as Democratic nominee after Platner's insurgent campaign rapidly unraveled as scandal after scandal piled up, culminating in a sexual assault allegation from his ex-girlfriend that he has since denied.
Jackson had previously run in Maine's gubernatorial contest, finishing third in the primary earlier this summer. Once Platner exited the race in July, he was quickly chosen by Maine Democrats to succeed him to take on longtime incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in a race that could define the balance of power in the Senate.
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But Jackson never really wanted to run for the Senate, the Midcoast Villager reported, but felt it was important to pick up the mantle of progressive politics that Platner had suddenly dropped.
"I wish nothing would have happened with Graham," Jackson said. "I wish, you know, things would have continued like all that. It would have been much better. But when it did, I just didn't want to see all these people that are looking for somebody to fight for them go away once again broken and hopeless."
Jackson, a fellow progressive who had previously worked on the presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had campaigned alongside Platner and was endorsed by him in his bid for the governor's mansion.
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When the final allegation hit, he, like several other Democrats both in-state and across the country, called on Platner to exit the race.
"The allegations against Graham Platner are serious, credible, and deserving of full accountability - they cannot and must not be ignored," Jackson said in a statement on X at the time.
"There is a powerful movement of working-class people in the state of Maine," he continued. "For the sake of that movement, and the millions of Americans who have put their trust in it, Graham must now step down."
Jackson has had his own scandals, however.
He has most recently come under scrutiny for his temper following a water bottle-throwing incident while he served in the Senate, and after the discovery of a 1988 police record in which Jackson was alleged to have assaulted a man and pushed his longtime partner, Lana Pelletier, who according to records is his second cousin, during a late-night confrontation.
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Collins declined to weigh in on the police record when asked by Fox News Digital earlier this month, arguing that was up to Jackson.
"But I will say that, based on widespread reporting, it appears that he struggles to control his temper," Collins said.
Meanwhile, there's an effort afoot to get Platner to register as a write-in candidate in Maine. The deadline to do so is Aug. 25.
A website, writeingrahamforme.com, was launched as op-eds by Scott Niemi have made the rounds in local newspapers in Maine pushing for Platner to submit himself as a write-in, given that under Maine law write-in votes for an undeclared candidate don't count.
Niemi argued in the Bangor Daily News that writing in Platner would prove to establishment Democrats that they don't get to "overrule the will of Maine voter," and that because of Maine's ranked-choice voting system, they could rank Jackson second to "keep the seat competitive."
"If Graham does not have enough votes to advance during tabulation, those ballots are not wasted, they transfer over to Jackson in the next round if he is ranked second," Niemi wrote. "I believe it is a mathematically solid plan to defeat Collins come election time."
