David M. Drucker: You can't beat Susan Collins on working-class vibes alone

Let’s give credit where it’s due to Democrats hoping to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine: Troy Jackson is certainly an improvement over Graham Platner.

As a former longtime state legislator, his background has been vetted, and he doesn’t appear burdened by personal scandal (or a Nazi tattoo.)

But Democrats — progressive and otherwise — might still be miscalculating. They imagine their new U.S. Senate nominee to be the populist pied piper of coveted working-class voters. In reality, Maine’s Democratic powerbrokers are repeating the same mistake with Jackson as the out-of-state consultants made with Platner, who was plucked from obscurity before dropping out of the general election last month following multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.

The party prioritized superficial qualities it imagines appeal to blue-collar voters over the sort of grounded substance that does.

Jackson, 58, was raised in northern Maine’s Aroostook County, hails from a line of loggers and was a logger himself. He was also an effective union organizer before spending two decades in the State Legislature and is fond of work shirts and baseball caps.

But a quick check of his campaign website reveals a decidedly left-wing agenda that working-class voters tend to view suspiciously: support for socialized medicine, abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and opposition to U.S. military aid for Israel.

Those positions could complicate Jackson’s bid to oust Collins in a state more politically diverse, and complicated, than its more than three-decade streak of voting Democrat in presidential elections suggests.

“Maine is not Manhattan,” Professor Mark D. Brewer, chair of the University of Maine’s political science department, told me. He explained that Jackson, who sought the Democratic nomination for governor but finished third, will have trouble this fall if his entreaties to center-right voters are limited to “performative” and “stylistic” efforts. “He’s got the pedigree that’ll serve him well,” Brewer added. “But even that’s not going to be enough.”

That’s not to say Collins, who’s 73 and in her fifth term, isn’t vulnerable. Jackson’s supporters waive signs with “Retire Susan” plastered on them.

The midterm elections are shaping up to be a rebuke of President Donald Trump; the data shows that Democratic voters are more energized to pull the lever in November than Republicans, and the Pine Tree State has opted for team blue in the three most recent White House contests by a healthy, average margin of 6.3 percentage points. Jackson even led Collins, 49% to 46%, in a survey fielded in mid-July, although recent public opinion polling is sparse.

But politically, Maine is not that simple — which is plain to see outside of Portland and other affluent coastal enclaves. Head west and north and the state is rugged, rural and dotted with farms, mills, single-stop-light villages and Trump signs. Maine’s two congressional districts are illustrative: The 1st is cobalt blue, backing then-Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump in 2024 by roughly 22 points. But the other, the 2nd district, is Republican-leaning and supported the 45th and 47th president by approximately 10 points three times.

Jackson has to offer those voters more than a plaid shirt, work boots and callused hands to win them over. The former state senator ought to follow the example of fellow Maine Democrat and outgoing U.S. Representative Jared Golden, a Marine veteran who looks every bit the part that Democratic insiders and strategists sought to project with Platner, and now Jackson, but he has the policy chops to lend credibility to the everyman image they believe will deliver victory over Collins.

The retiring 2nd district congressman ousted a Republican incumbent in 2018, the president’s first midterm elections. He surfed the “blue wave” that year and built his win on centrist appeals to the political right that included fervent support for border security, among other conservative sweeteners. (Golden’s agenda pointedly did not include lefty policy-pleasers like Medicare for All.) Even still, he won only narrowly, with a boost from Maine’s ranked-choice voting system.

Jackson, who is running statewide, may not be swimming upriver the way Golden was. But Maine voters have historically prized pragmatism in their senators. Consider that the state’s other senator, mild-mannered Angus King, caucuses with the Democrats. But he was elected as an independent in 2012 and has remained so.

Collins, meanwhile, is a formidable campaigner who Democrats have repeatedly — and miserably — failed to defeat, despite favorable political atmospherics. And she is adept at being pragmatic when it counts. Collins eschews ideological warfare, uses her Senate seniority to bring home federal tax dollars and maintains her standing with the kinds of left-leaning voters who proliferate across the 1st district by crossing her party, and Trump, on key issues.

Her latest entreaty is opposing the confirmation of Todd Blanche to permanently serve as U.S. attorney general. The senator also voted against Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act and has supported abortion rights throughout her career.

If Collins had retired — and given that Trump is as unpopular in Maine as he is elsewhere — Jackson might have bested a generic Republican clearly aligned with the president. He would have flipped this Senate seat, armed with nothing more than a progressive agenda and working-class vibes.

But Collins isn’t that, and she isn’t calling it quits. So Jackson — who opposed abortion rights and same-sex marriage when he entered politics years ago but has since evolved — might do well to spend some time back in his native Aroostook County (where Trump defeated Harris by more than 26 points). He might figure out how to give his old neighbors reasons to vote for him this November that are more than just skin deep.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

David M. Drucker is a columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of "In Trump's Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP."

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