In the days immediately after Democrat Graham Platner dropped out of Maine’s senate race amid an allegation of sexual assault, it looked as though selecting his replacement might be something of a free-for-all. Ahead of an unprecedented convention to choose a new nominee on July 25, 13 Democrats threw their hats in the ring. But a large majority of delegates who will vote at the convention (mostly selected by voters at county meetings last weekend) quickly rallied around Troy Jackson. A former state senate president who had unsuccessfully run for governor earlier this year, Jackson is now almost certain to face Republican Susan Collins this fall, in a crucial race for national Democrats. Like her, he hails from Aroostook County, the vast, sparsely populated northern section of the state. To add to his blue-collar bona fides, Jackson is also a former logger who made his name participating in a blockade to protest the hiring of temporary Canadian workers over locals — a show of the kind of economic populism that Platner espoused. But reports have also emerged that Jackson can be temperamental and domineering.

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You’re a Maine politics veteran. You’ve been in the state house, you’ve been in the state senate twice, you’ve been attorney general. Troy Jackson has also been around for quite a while. What is your overall impression of him?

I never met Troy Jackson until, I think, the campaign of 2014. They coerced me into running for the senate in 2014. That would have been my first contact with Troy. I don’t remember much about it. He was there, and they were helping me out with some money and some strategy. I lost that election. A lot of help they were, huh? Then in 2016, they talked me into it again over the objections of my secretary, who’s a rock-ribbed Republican. She’s sitting right here, listening. We don’t agree what day of the week it is. So in 2016, I ran and I won. And Troy was involved there, but I don’t remember ever having a real conversation with him until after I got elected that year.

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I went down to Augusta, and we were in the minority — he was the minority leader. And Troy’s very rough around the edges. He swears too much. He is not polished in some ways. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, and he can get emotional talking about his background. And I came to admire Troy because I’ve been in a lot of meetings with him, in a lot of different circumstances, and I’ve never seen him waver. And I mean private meetings — little meetings with just him and me and a few staff members. We got to be quite close. And I would like to think that sometimes I helped govern his impulses, because he’s very outspoken. He is very sincere, in my opinion, very sincere in his beliefs. What you see is what you’ve got. There’s not much polish there. Talks with a funny accent, even though he comes from the very French northern part of the state of Maine. There’s a pocket of Irishmen — there’s McBriarty’s and Haffords, and they’re not French at all.

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You mentioned that Jackson has changed his positions a lot since he entered politics. From what I’ve read, he hasn’t shifted on the economic populism so much; that’s always been there. But on social issues like abortion, he’s totally different from what he was at the beginning of his career, when he was a Republican. You said what you see is what you get, but do you sense that he did that out of political expediency? Is there some shape-shifting going on?No, I think there was a sincere change of views. When I first went to the legislature, I’d been back home from Vietnam for two or three years and I was so far to the right it was ridiculous. And over years of exposure to different views and different people and different arguments — I hate the term shape-shifting, but I guess that’s what the popular term is now — I changed a lot of my positions. The ones that I saw Troy change on probably had to do, in part, with the fact that he was the leader of the group, but I never thought he was insincere.

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You also mentioned right away that he’s rough around the edges. He’s known to have a temper, to be impolitic. Do you think that’s going to be an asset for him? Graham Platner was a little too rough around the edges in some ways obviously, but people were attracted to that kind of rabble-rousing persona.I think he can pick up the Platner message — I don’t think it will come across as insincere. But I don’t know that he has a temper. I saw a story somewhere about how he threw a bottle of water. First of all, I was in the caucus every day for four years. I don’t know when they say that happened. If it happened between 2016 and 2020, it’s a lie. (Ed note: The alleged incident took place in 2021.) And I think I would have heard about it even if — I was defeated in 2020 and decided to come home, but I never heard of that. Troy’s very level in that way. He’s very tolerant, I’ve always found, of other people’s views. He and I have had some pretty good arguments about different things, but I wouldn’t say that he has a temper. Rough around the edges in terms of his grammar and that sort of thing, and he does swear a lot in private. A product of where he comes from, I guess.

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CNN’s story about the alleged water-bottle incident also included anonymous quotes, people who said they didn’t want to go on the record because of Jackson’s “volatile personality,” as the article put it. There were allegations of bullying, and questions about whether he is harsher on women than he is on men. You haven’t seen any of that stuff?Honestly, I’ve never seen any such thing. Never. I’d like to think of myself as a feminist and and am very supportive of those sorts of things, and the whole control wheel. I deal with a lot of issues of domestic violence in my life as an attorney, and I don’t like it. And I literally have never seen that, and  never detected it from any of the women in the caucus.

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Some of the other contenders for this primary, like Nirav Shah and Shenna Bellows, were a bit more in the traditional Democratic candidate mold. Do you think the fact that Jackson presents more similarly to Platner will help smooth the transition a bit? I don’t know how much ill will there was around his exit.I don’t know either. I was a supporter until you got to a red line and you couldn’t go any further. I think Troy — he’s a much different speaker. You could certainly argue, and he’s not going to get mad at me for saying this — I don’t think he’s as charismatic as Platner was, but I think he makes up for it with passion and sincerity.

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In 2014, Jackson ran for Congress And then, of course, he ran for governor earlier this year. The Congressional campaign didn’t go well at all — he lost by a huge margin. And obviously he didn’t win this year either, though he was a serious contender. But does that say anything worrying to you about his chances of winning a much higher-profile race where money’s going to be pouring in from all directions and he’s going to become a national figure, if he isn’t already?I think it’s going to be a nationalized election. Senator Collins is the last member of her party standing in this part of the world. And I think Troy’s passion makes up for some of the electability issue. If you look at the gubernatorial primary this year, he did really well. I was really surprised. Obviously we knew we’d do well up here, with the local vote. But this logger who —  he does have a college degree, but he starts out in politics with a high school education — beat the more traditional-slash-polished candidates in Portland by over 2,000 votes. I was shocked. He finished third. It was a close third. And I do think Senator Collins is vulnerable, and Troy was certainly well-organized for the process we’re going through right now. I think the organization will be there.

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Yes, I think it was widely agreed that his team’s organization — including from the unions — was quite impressive. .I saw huge turnout for Troy, and it has to be driven by the unions. But I think there’s a real message there, the whole income inequality thing, which I’ve been talking about for years. And it really seems to me with the introduction of DOGE and Musk as the first trillionaire and all that stuff, it’s time to talk about it.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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