The Progressive Experiment

On July 10th, Graham Platner officially dropped out of Maine’s Senate election after being accused of rape by a former romantic partner. While he denied the allegations, Platner acknowledged that his campaign was no longer viable in an eleven-minute video he posted on social media.

Platner’s departure forced the Maine Democratic Party into an unusual situation. The party had less than three weeks to select a new candidate to face Republican Senator Susan Collins in November. At the same time, it had to reconcile two potentially conflicting political realities: Platner himself had become a liability, but the populist and anti-establishment movement that propelled him through the Democratic primary remained an important part of the party’s coalition.

Platner’s movement had demonstrated its strength in the Democratic primary. He won 72 percent of the vote, while Gov. Janet Mills—who suspended her campaign in April after stating that her campaign was no longer viable—received 19 percent. The scale of Platner’s victory was striking: a political newcomer running on economic populism had overwhelmed a two-term governor who was endorsed by party leaders. As such, his replacement would have to appeal to a base that strongly favored anti-establishment figures.

Under Maine law, the Maine Democratic Party had the right to choose a replacement nominee by July 27th—but the manner in which they did so was entirely their choice. Ultimately, the party chose to hold a nominating convention in which roughly 600 delegates were selected by Democratic voters.

Although more than a dozen Democrats expressed interest in replacing him, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson emerged as the clear favorite in an election where turnout was much lower than in the original primary. Jackson offered the party a far safer alternative to Platner: a candidate who, despite possessing less charm than his counterpart, was closely aligned with Platner’s economic populism and had years of experience in state government and organized labor.

On July 25, delegates overwhelmingly selected Jackson as the new nominee. According to Maine Public, Jackson received “566 votes versus five votes for Pelletier, a biopharmaceutical executive running for public office for the first time,” winning almost unanimously. Jackson’s victory marked the second time in a matter of weeks that Maine Democrats rejected an opportunity to nominate the establishment candidate.

Jackson must now convert his support among convention delegates into a coalition capable of defeating Senator Susan Collins, an electoral juggernaut who has held her seat since winning it in 1996. She has won consistently despite Maine supporting the Democratic nominee in every 21st-century Presidential election.

Early polling indicates that the race remains competitive. A University of New Hampshire survey conducted shortly before the convention found Jackson leading Collins by 49 percent to 46 percent, although the university considered the two candidates “statistically tied in a November election matchup”. Polling conducted in coordination with Platner’s campaign found that Jackson was the only Democratic candidate who could hold a sizeable lead against Collins, giving him a 5-point advantage.

However, Democrats have particular reason to treat that advantage cautiously. In the 2020 Senate elections, Collins also trailed Democratic challenger Sara Gideon in most public polling during her 2020 reelection campaign, with 270toWin’s aggregate polling having Gideon up by 4 percentage points in an election. Collins won by a 9-point margin.¹

Nevertheless, the Democratic Party’s coalescence around an anti-establishment candidate in a contested Senate race poses an intriguing question about the electoral viability of economic populism for Democratic nominees. In several races, including in Michigan and Maine, major progressive figures like Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders have fought against the conventional wisdom of running moderate or even conservative Democrats in swing-state elections.

In an interview with the Majority Report, Ocasio-Cortez spoke directly about this conventional wisdom, stating that, “when [she] first got there,” there was “a really concrete conception in the party that only one kind of candidate can win a swing state… And it was very conservative, and it was very cookie-cutter, and it didn’t matter if your swing seat was in Ohio or Nebraska or Pennsylvania, you had to take certain positions.” But she pushed back against this way of thinking, instead looking for candidates who were willing to support positions like “Medicare for All” and stating that, “if [candidates] take a risk, [she would] support [them]” against the establishment.

Jackson’s candidacy represents a remarkable shift away from the “cookie-cutter” sort of policies for swing-state candidates that Ocasio-Cortez previously described. Jackson, who won the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America in his unsuccessful bid for governor, is running an unabashedly progressive campaign rooted in Medicare for All, overturning Citizens United, and increasing taxes on the wealthy, among various other priorities.

In that sense, Jackson’s appeal resembles the political strategy described by Ocasio-Cortez, even if he has not won her endorsement—something that sets him apart from other Senate nominees like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. Yet, Jackson also appeals in ways strikingly similar to how Platner first rose to prominence: his political identity is grounded in his experience as a fifth-generation logger from rural northern Maine. This background could help him communicate progressive policies to voters who might otherwise resist the label attached to them.

With the candidates polling close to even, it remains to be seen whether Jackson’s populist messaging will be able to overcome the electoral juggernaut that is Susan Collins. Given his late entrance into the race, Jackson is already at a disadvantage—he has just under three months remaining before Election Day to get his message across, whereas Collins has been an established presence in the state for decades.

If Jackson succeeds, his victory would challenge the conventional belief that Democrats competing in politically divided states must nominate candidates who moderate their economic positions. It would suggest that progressive policies can remain viable when paired with candidates with strong local identities and credible connections to working-class communities.

If he loses, however, the meaning will be less certain. There are already a host of factors dragging down his campaign: his late entrance, Collins’s incumbency and unique appeal to Mainers, and the lingering damage caused by Platner’s campaign collapse. Despite these controversies, it is all but certain that, should Jackson lose in November, Moderate voices within the party would seize upon his loss as definitive proof that progressive figures cannot succeed in politically divided battlegrounds. A simpler argument would likely overshadow the unique circumstances surrounding his campaign: Democrats nominated an economic populist in a winnable race, and lost because of it.

For the progressive movement, the stakes extend far beyond Maine. With Abdul El-Sayed winning the Senate Democratic primary in Michigan, Jackson is not alone. However, these progressive candidates must now answer the more consequential question posed by Ocasio-Cortez’s strategy: whether a candidate can reject the party’s traditional swing-state formula and still assemble the broader coalition necessary to win in November. A victory in Maine or Michigan might not create a universal formula for every battleground, but it could expand the range of candidates and ideas the party accepts as viable, giving future progressives a stronger case for receiving institutional support rather than being forced aside before voters can judge them.

1. The third-place candidate campaigned alongside Gideon, suggesting the race may have been closer had third-place votes been included in Maine’s ranked-choice system. However, because Susan Collin won with over 50% of the vote, the ranked-choice system did not apply. ↩︎