Will this electoral appeal translate to a larger audience?
Mr. Jackson lacks both the in-room and the on-camera charisma that powered Mr. Platner’s meteoric rise.
Mr. Jackson’s electoral success also comes in a very specific context. His hometown, Allagash, is tiny and remote — it’s a longer drive from Portland, Maine, than Portland is from New York City. As I recall from a long wilderness canoe trip I took years ago, it has only one restaurant, the Two Rivers Lunch. (It also serves breakfast.) The towns on the Canadian side of the nearby border are larger than Allagash, and the cultural and economic orientation of the region is often more toward Canada than to the rest of the state. There is a notable Francophone minority in the area, and Mr. Jackson speaks with a distinctive Acadian accent.
Like many constituents in his traditionally Catholic home base, Mr. Jackson used to be anti-abortion and skeptical of same-sex marriage. It worked politically in a district that was swinging to the right, but it put him out of step with mainstream Democrats. As he ascended the ladder of state politics, Mr. Jackson evolved into a more conventional progressive on cultural issues. He retained his own electoral strength locally, but in 2024, the year he was term-limited out, his state senate district went for Mr. Trump, even as Kamala Harris won the state comfortably.
Which is a reminder that for all the focus on Mr. Platner’s supposed ability to appeal to Trump voters, Maine is, overall, a blue state. It’s an idiosyncratic one: much whiter and more sparsely populated than most of the rest of blue America, but still quite secular. About 40 percent of its population lives in solidly blue Greater Portland, and the state didn’t see the Democratic slippage that others did in 2024. The political landscape suggests that all Democrats really need to do to defeat the incumbent Republican, Senator Susan Collins, is persuade enough Democrats who’ve voted three times against Mr. Trump to vote Democratic this fall.
In a sense, Maine is the inverse of other critical 2026 Senate battlegrounds such as North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and Texas. Mr. Jackson’s culturally conservative background — which would be a clear asset in a red state — may be a booby trap in some Maine precincts. Ms. Collins can argue in the southern part of the state that she, unlike her opponent, has been a defender of abortion rights her whole career while in the northern interior she can campaign as tough on border security.
