A fifth-generation logger from Allagash is likely to face Susan Collins. But is Troy Jackson ready?

Six weeks ago, on a glorious early summer Monday evening, Troy Jackson was flipping burgers.

As supporters gathered on the banks of the Penobscot River near Bangor for a thank-you cookout, Jackson — a former state Senate president from the far north Maine woods — was hoping to win the Democratic primary for governor the next day and then campaign through November with his close ally, Senate candidate Graham Platner.

What feels like multiple political lifetimes later, Jackson lost that primary, and Platner withdrew from his race in scandal. Now, Jackson will need to flip more than burgers: Democrats are moving to task him with flipping Maine — and possibly the whole US Senate.

Jackson quickly came forward to replace Platner, and his organizing muscle turned what was shaping up as a contentious process to pick a new candidate into a foregone conclusion. Over the weekend, when county parties met to select delegates to Saturday’s statewide convention, they voted in overwhelming numbers for delegates who had pledged their support for Jackson.

But even ifthe convention is now shaping up as a coronation, Jackson’s path ahead is fraught. Many Maine Democrats are still mourning the collapse of Platner’s campaign and hoped for someone to continue his message. The populist Jackson will need to unite Democrat factions — something he failed to do in the gubernatorialprimary. He must also contendwith fresh scrutiny of his past social conservative positions, his alliance with Platner and defenses of him as scandals mounted, and his conduct as state Senate president, which came under fire Monday amid reporting about his allegedly volatile temper.

Jackson has no time to get his bearings, with his inevitably brutal, expensive, and hard-fought contest against Republican Senator Susan Collins just over 100 days away.

“She’s had years to stand up for working people, and she hasn’t done a damn thing,” Jackson said in a statement released Monday morning. “I’m running because Maine deserves someone who’s going to deliver for them and fight like hell for the people who work for a living.”

Maine voters will hear that pitch often until November, but it’s also the same basic pitch Jackson has been consistently delivering throughout a decades-long political career defined by his staunch advocacy for organized labor.

“Troy is a very old-fashioned Democrat,” said Anthony Emerson, a Portland native who ran as a pro-Jackson delegate to the convention. “He is a labor guy through and through.”

Sarah Nichols, the former mayor of Bangor and a close Jackson ally, says she has a running joke with friends. “If there’s a picket in Maine,” she said, “Troy is there, whether or not you called him.”

Jackson will advance the same style of politics that propelled Platner from obscurity to political sensation. Many Democrats hope that he can recapture the energy behind Platner and harness it to defeat Collins.

But his closeness to Platner — the two campaigned together frequently — will immediately open Jackson up to Republican attacks.

The Republican National Committee dubbed Jackson “Graham Platner 2.0” and knocked him for defending Platner amid his many previous controversies. They also hit him over backing the same progressive policies as Platner, including enacting Medicare For All and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported on a pattern of Jackson losing his temper with colleagues as Senate president, particularly women. In one episode, Jackson allegedly threw a water bottle toward another Democratic senator during a heated meeting before “haranguing” her extremely close to her face. (Through a spokesman, Jackson acknowledged moments of anger but denied throwing anything at anyone.)

In theory, supporters have believed Jackson is suited to champion a left-wing populist platform, given his hard-won labor bona fides and humble roots. There is a recurring quip in state Democratic circles that Jackson genuinely is who many people believed Platner was.

At the same time, where Platner was a talented speaker perfectly suited to today’s viral clip-driven world of political media, Jackson is a halting speaker, low-key and some would say unpolished. He speaks in an accent not often found outside parts of northern Maine and Canada.

“He comes across as, I’m not going to say he’s not a good speaker, he is a specific kind of speaker for Maine,” said Wes Pelletier, a Portland city councilor who backed Jackson for governor and quickly endorsed him for Senate. “He’s a genuine dude who cares about the working class, and the people in the state, in a language that’s not common in politics.”

Jackson learned his political language early. He grew up in Allagash, population roughly 200 people, in far northern Aroostook County. He has said his first political memory came in seventh grade, when he went to a picket line with his father.

After going into the family trade of logging, in 1998, Jackson gained wider political recognition as a leader in a controversial effort to stop large Maine lumber interests from bringing in lower-paid temporary Canadian workers — by physically blockading the border to prevent them from getting in.

In 2000, Jackson ran for the Maine state House as a Republican and lost, but won as an independent two years later. He was a pro-labor social conservative: In 2009, he voted against legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Maine, a vote for which he later expressed regret. He also expressed opposition to abortion as recently as 2012.

Beginning in 2014 with an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for Congress, Jackson has steadily moved to the left. He was an early backer of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president; after winning election to the state Senate in 2016, and then becoming Senate president, Jackson pushed progressive policies.

Still, Jackson managed to continue winning his Senate district even as it increasingly became Donald Trump turf — a fact many of his supporters have pointed to in arguing for his electability. When he was term-limited out, in 2024, a Republican easily flipped the district.

Now at the Maine Education Association, Nichols pointed to a recent fight to underscore what she says is Jackson’s effectiveness — raising the minimum wage for public school support staff. Democrats were generally supportive, Nichols said, but Jackson pushed to make the issue a priority.

“I never seen anyone go to the mat to the extent that he did,” she said. “He was crucial.”

That record is a big reason why organized labor got behind Jackson so quickly when he launched his campaign for governor last year. Their organizing power was an advantage as Jackson faced a crowded field of notable Democrats. He also tapped into his labor network to introduce Platner, a newcomer, to key players.

The two began appearing together often, beginning last August, when they joined Sanders for a well-attended rally in Portland. At the height of Platner’s popularity, in May, he gave Jackson a big lift by encouraging supporters to rank him first in the ranked-choice gubernatorial primary.

But as Platner secured the nomination with 72 percent of the vote, Jackson ended up placing third in the governor primary behind Nirav Shah and Hannah Pingree, the eventual winner. He won the most votes in Portland, and carried nearly every town in his home county of Aroostook.

Less than a month later, Platner would face calls to drop out of the race by the July 13 deadline provided under state law for a party to replace a nominee. Jackson quickly jettisoned his former ally.

Jackson and his supporters effectively hit the ground running before Platner had officially dropped out. While the exact process to replace him was unclear, what was clear was that party activists, not the media or rank-and-file voters, would decide the eventual nominee.

Other candidates held more public town halls or perhaps performed more smoothly in the race’s one televised debate last Thursday. But Jackson, with decades worth of contacts and backed by seasoned organizers, quickly moved to organize their slates of delegates for the county conventions.

The results from county caucuses instantly vanquished any notions of a chaotic, contested convention this weekend: Jackson had secured at least 456 of the 500 delegates up for grabs, according to the Globe.

“We started doing the work even before he asked us,” said Nichols. “That’s the type of network and camaraderie he’s built. … We’re a bunch of organizers.”