That very same political candidate, Troy Jackson, is now poised to take Platner’s place as the Democrat in Maine’s Senate race.

It’s a reflection of just how tumultuous the past year in politics has been in Maine, which is typically known for its steady and sober-minded statesmen.

When the event took place last August on an organic farm in Belmont, Maine, in the Midcoast region of the state, Jackson was a progressive candidate for governor. He delivered a speech with much of the same policies as Platner, but a lot less of his charisma, speaking hesitantly in the distinctive Acadian accent that marks him as a son of the North Maine Woods. 

Standing at the back of a tent strung with bistro lights, Platner was shucking oysters. Chickens ran past and a local folk band warmed up the crowd.

Platner had announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate a week earlier, but his campaign was so young and unplanned that he had agreed to cater the event “when running for Senate wasn’t anywhere on my plate,” he explained to the crowd.

“This is an event for Troy, and I don’t want to monopolize it. But I do just want to introduce myself,” Platner said. He then launched into a fiery stump speech showcasing the everyman charisma that would soon make him a national phenomenon. The audience had come to see Jackson. They left talking about Platner.

Less than a year later, though, Platner is a political pariah and the candidate he upstaged—and who finished a third in the gubernatorial primary—is poised to replace him in a mad dash to election day. Whether Jackson can defeat longtime Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins is one of the most consequential questions in the coming midterms.

With all that has happened, the vibe in the state is almost manic.

And I am feeling the attention of the rest of the country in a way I never expected when I left my job of a decade covering elections for NBC News in Washington, D.C., and relocated to Midcoast Maine in 2022.

Everywhere I go as a local reporter, I hear people talking about all of the possibilities of the next few months, and all of the personalities involved—often on a first-name basis and with the sense of familiarity only possible in a small state. Yard signs crowd busy rural intersections. I am being hounded by pollsters, direct mailers and campaigners—but also readers and friends in the aisles of Hannaford or at school pickup, asking questions and offering opinions with a level of informed specificity that I’ve never encountered. The political ads are occasionally interrupted by some actual TV programming.

Maine has one of the highest rates of voter turnout in the country, according to an analysis from the University of Florida’s Election Lab. The tradition of New England direct democracy asks voters to turn out multiple times a year to weigh in directly on everything from school budgets to cemetery committees. 

People care about their town government and taxes, attend local meetings and often know someone who has served in some elective office or committee. At the Midcoast Villager, the paper I work for, we regularly receive letters to the editor that cite figures buried in the town budget or obscure provisions in state law that might apply to a controversial proposed development.

This past weekend, over 17,000 Maine Democrats gathered in hastily organized county party caucuses across the state to choose delegates who will officially select a replacement for Platner on July 25. But even before those delegates could cast their votes, it was clear that Jackson was the favorite. A state senator who came up through the organized labor movement, Jackson’s experience counting votes and working insider processes helped him out-organize his opponents. He nearly swept all potential nominating delegates in county Democratic caucuses.

Not every Democrat I talk to is happy with the outcome. 

Sure, Jackson is a fellow Sanders-backed progressive. His working-class bona fides are much more straightforward than those put forward by Platner’s campaign. (A fifth-generation logger from a remote corner of Aroostook County, 250 miles from the coast, Jackson was born to a poor teen mom and his formal education topped out with an associate degree from the University of Maine at Fort Kent.)

But the caucus weekend cut short an already rushed nomination process. Some voters and delegates I talked to said the overwhelming outcome for Jackson didn’t reflect the will of voters and showed the flaws in a process they feel favored him too greatly. Candidates had not even officially qualified for the ballot when he was declared the presumptive winner. 

And even Jackson’s supporters acknowledge he’s not known as a stellar communicator—that he can be a bit of a tough hang, with a sharp temper. When I moderated a forum with the Democratic gubernatorial candidates, he made no effort to disguise his exasperated sighs as I took another audience question, even though we were running only slightly over time.

Most concerningly, Jackson probably wouldn’t be here without Platner. Though Jackson finished third in the gubernatorial primary, he might have done worse had Platner not effectively turned his campaign organization toward helping Jackson after securing the Senate nomination.

To the minds of many Mainers, the best case scenario for Democrats is that Jackson could be a bit of an LBJ to Platner’s JFK: The charismatic but flawed outsider giving way to an uncouth, but more experienced operator who might prove capable of winning and even more capable at legislating.

In the worst case for Democrats, he could be a ghostly echo of Kamala Harris following Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential campaign, a promising but perhaps undermatched replacement dragged down by chaos, infighting and the flaws of predecessors.