Former Maine State Senate President Troy Jackson has effectively secured the Democrat nomination to challenge incumbent GOP Senator Susan Collins in Maine after dominating the party’s delegate selection process over the weekend.
Jackson Emerges as Favorite
As reported on Tuesday’s AM Update, more than two-thirds of the delegates expected to attend the party’s statewide convention this Saturday have committed to supporting Jackson, though they are not legally bound to do so.
The commanding lead prompted all four of his major opponents to withdraw from the primary by Sunday evening, including Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former state public health official Nirav Shah.
The hastily organized convention will formally replace progressive Graham Platner, who overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary in June but dropped out earlier this month after a former girlfriend accused him of raping her. Platner denied the allegations, which followed a steady stream of damaging reports about his behavior.
Jackson entered the race with strong support from the party’s progressive wing and many former Platner supporters. The fifth-generation logger is backed by Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Our Revolution, the political group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The senator and the Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America endorsed Jackson during his unsuccessful campaign for governor earlier this year.
Jackson is trying to present himself as a candidate who can form a broad enough coalition to unseat Collins, which has proven to be no easy feat. The moderate Republican has repeatedly defeated well-funded Democrat challengers since first winning her Senate seat in 1996.
Checkered Past
But reporting suggests Maine Dems just might be swapping out one scandal-scarred politician for another.
The Maine Wire reported earlier this month on an allegation circulated by the progressive organization Progressive Victory, which claimed Jackson once threw a water bottle that struck a female colleague during a heated disagreement.
The Maine Wire editor-in-chief Steven Robinson told AM Update the story has circulated among political insiders in the Pine Tree State for years, but he does not believe the alleged incident will derail Jackson’s campaign given what Platner was able to endure.
“Think about how much it took in order for actual assault allegations [against Platner] to become credible,” he noted. “For me, the water bottle story is you know, it’s kind of a funny anecdote of his time in Augusta, but it’s a he said-she said thing where he claims that he threw the water bottle at the floor in frustration, while the anonymous sources repeating the perspective of an anonymous lawmaker say that it was thrown at a female lawmaker.”
Robinson said he doesn’t “think that this will be the most devastating or the biggest story” that emerges about Jackson, whom he believes could find himself in legal trouble over a 2019 purchase of a home in Augusta that is hundreds of miles outside the northern Maine district he represented in the State Senate.
“I’ve spent a long time reporting on him… He abused the FHA mortgage program to buy a house in Augusta, which is 230 miles away from his district in Allagash, Maine,” Robinson explained. “The FHA loan program has an occupancy clause in the mortgage, so he swore that he was going to live in Augusta as his primary residence. At the same time, he was swearing in campaign documents and filings with the Maine ethics commission that his primary residence was in Allegash. So, both of those things can’t be true.”
The Maine Wire first reported on the documents in 2023 after Jackson became embroiled in a legal dispute involving the Augusta property. He later acknowledged he did not satisfy the mortgage’s primary-residence provision, while claiming he had not fully read the agreement.
The Maine Ethics Commission ultimately declined to investigate the allegations after staff concluded the commission lacked jurisdiction over some of the claims and had insufficient grounds to pursue the others, according to local outlet Maine Public.
In Robinson’s view, the discrepancies in Jackson’s federal mortgage paperwork could still expose him to charges depending on whether Maine’s current U.S. attorney decides to pursue the case.
“When he got the mortgage in the first place, there was a Biden-appointee who has since gotten a judgeship from the Mills administration,” he noted. “A loyal Democrat would be reluctant to file charges against the Senate president, but now you have an appointee from President Trump so the U.S. attorney right now could bring fraud charges against Troy Jackson for mortgage fraud.”
More Allegations
While Robinson may be right that, in today’s Democrat Party, the water bottle incident is not particularly damaging on its own, The Washington Post published an exclusive late Monday about how the “Democrat set to replace Platner in Maine led state Senate with a temper.” The Post reports Jackson “yelled and cursed at fellow state lawmakers,” including several spats with women, according to more than two dozen people who spoke to the outlet.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Josh Holmes, Michael Duncan, and John Ashbrook of Ruthless to discuss the reporting on Jackson and what it means for Dems’ chances in Maine. Watch:
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Ruthless by tuning in to episode 1,364 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.