“It’s probably the biggest race in the whole country,” Jackson said. “And Senator Collins is a whole different type of person to run against.”
Jackson’s campaign showed up to the county conventions with organized groups of volunteers, many of them sporting “Jackson for Maine” t-shirts from his recent unsuccessful run for governor. They also carried flyers with clear delegate slates after making a deluge of calls across the state to recruit supporters and make sure their backers were in place to push him at next week’s convention.
A logger from far-northern Allagash, Jackson made his rise in Maine politics through organized labor and has long been an ally of progressives, receiving Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) backing in the gubernatorial race. He campaigned arm-in-arm with Platner during the original primary. But Jackson swiftly called for him to exit the race after POLITICO reported that a person who dated Platner said he sexually assaulted her. Platner denied the accusation, but dropped out four days later.
Jackson has been able to quickly establish himself as the candidate most in the mold of the oysterman, who dominated the Senate primary, given his longtime track record of backing similar policies.
Saturday’s strong organizational effort by Jackson and his allies — which came just eight days after Platner dropped his campaign, augmented by volunteers from more than a dozen unions that are endorsing Jackson — represents an impressive accomplishment under a tight timeline.
And it has set him up as the clear favorite over a crowded field of more than 10 candidates heading into the second day of county conventions. His nearest rivals, fellow former gubernatorial nominees Shah and Bellows, came out of Saturday’s slate of conventions with hardly any path to victory. Eight more counties will select 181 more combined delegates on Sunday, with another 101 Democratic state committee members already chosen and whose votes are less clear since they are not being elected as part of any slate. Together they will all make up the 601 delegates who will pick their party’s nominee next weekend in the crucial Senate race.
Some of Jackson’s supporters didn’t come in committed to a candidate, but had been swayed by his team’s hyper-local level of retail politics, which will be crucial in the battle with Collins, one of the strongest retail politicians in Congress.
Liam Kent, a Jackson supporter who was elected as delegate on Jackson’s slate in Lincoln County, said he had been undecided when he applied to run as a delegate. But he threw his support behind Jackson.
