Maine Democrats appear poised to nominate Troy Jackson for Senate, after the former state Senate president won more than 90% of delegates for a convention to determine who will replace scandal-plagued Graham Platner.
Three of Jackson’s opponents quit the race after county party meetings where Jackson’s supporters heavily outnumbered them, and the campaign released a video from a weekend rally that portrayed him as a “working-class fighter” already facing Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in November.
In a new memo shared first with Semafor, the centrist think tank Third Way discouraged Democrats from letting recent developments convince them the entire electorate is moving left; swing voters, the memo argues, won’t show up in “social media likes, crowd sizes, or primary wins in deep blue places.”
One Maine race that worries centrists is the one for Rep. Jared Golden’s seat, where the moderate Democrat is retiring and progressive Matt Dunlap won the nomination to replace him. In a poll conducted for Dunlap’s campaign and shared with Semafor, the Democrat leads GOP nominee Paul LePage by a single point, the same margin Golden won by in 2024.