{"id":5242,"date":"2026-07-19T05:34:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T05:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=5242"},"modified":"2026-07-19T05:34:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T05:34:32","slug":"maine-democrats-take-step-toward-new-senate-pick-with-jolt-of-momentum-for-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=5242","title":{"rendered":"Maine Democrats take step toward new Senate pick, with jolt of momentum for Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<p><span>Democrats in Maine took a step on Saturday toward finding a Senate nominee to replace Graham Platner, choosing hundreds of delegates for a party convention next week and delivering a jolt of momentum to one candidate: Troy Jackson.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=5240\">Bukayo Saka\u2019s hat trick lifts England past Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, France in wild World Cup third-place match<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span>After Democrats held a day of meetings in stuffy college lecture halls, middle-school gymnasiums, barns, civic centers and virtual gatherings, Jackson, a progressive former state Senate president, claimed to have secured a significant advantage in eight counties that voted Saturday on their delegates.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>A review of the county results, along with campaign delegate slates, and interviews with Democratic operatives, voters and candidates pointed to a very successful showing for him, even as some variables &#8212; including a high-profile debate on Thursday &#8212; could still shift the race.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><span>\u201cI\u2019ve been getting text messages all day about, you know, what a great job I did,\u201d Jackson, a logger by trade, said in a video his campaign posted on Facebook, adding, \u201cAll of you just smoked it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><span>Get Starting Point<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span>A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.<\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><label>Enter Email<\/label><\/p>\n<div><button>Sign Up<\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span>Eight other counties in the state had yet to pick their delegates, and the full scope of the advantage Jackson might take into the July 25 convention was still unclear. And while some delegates described their preferences in their nominating documents and in forms they submitted to campaigns, they could still change their minds before the convention.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But it was clear by Saturday night that Jackson had built an imposing head start in a crowded race. The candidate chosen at the convention will take on Sen. Susan Collins, who is seen as one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents in the midterms but has defied political gravity for decades in her Democratic-leaning state.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In many ways, the day appeared to be less an exercise in small-town democracy and more about the political operations that candidates could build in the 10 days since Platner announced he would withdraw from the race.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Jackson\u2019s campaign announced it would host a tailgate at York County\u2019s party meeting on Sunday morning to follow his \u201ccommanding performance\u201d on Saturday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Other campaigns struck different notes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Jordan Wood, who joined the Senate race after falling short in a competitive House primary last month, said the results were \u201cshocking.\u201d He was stunned, he said in an interview, that he and Dr. Nirav Shah, who came in second in the Democratic primary for governor, had not received more support in caucus meetings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Shah did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Dan Kleban, a brewery owner who revived the Senate campaign he\u2019d dropped in the fall.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Shenna Bellows, the Maine secretary of state who lost to Collins in 2014 and came in fourth in the primary for governor, continued to project confidence on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cNo one in Maine has a track record like mine of standing up to Trump,\u201d Bellows wrote on Facebook on Saturday night. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to take that fight to the US Senate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Democratic county parties in Maine have been facing the daunting task of whittling down a group of nearly 3,700 delegate hopefuls into a pack of 500 delegates by Sunday night. Those select few will join about 100 members of a state party committee in voting for the party\u2019s new Senate nominee at the convention next week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The state party plunged into the complicated caucus process after Platner ended his campaign earlier this month, following a rape allegation he denied. The party has been racing against a July 27 deadline to pick a new candidate, and created the nomination process essentially from scratch.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=5238\">Lionel Messi and defending champion Argentina to play Spain for the World Cup soccer crown<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span>Around 11,500 Mainers participated and voted in Saturday\u2019s nominating meetings, the executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, Devon Murphy-Anderson, said in a video posted to social media Saturday night. A total of 19,000 Democrats were expected to participate throughout the weekend, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cMeetings like this normally take months,\u201d Wayne Kinney, chair of the Franklin County Democrats, told voters at a meeting in Farmington on Saturday morning. \u201cHere, we\u2019ve done this in days.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In Cumberland County, which is the state\u2019s most populous county and includes Portland, a Zoom gathering to elect 149 delegates out of nearly 1,300 candidates was silent and faceless for most of the 3-1\/2 hours of voting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Voters were sent ballots via email and text.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>At the end of the night, the chair, Joseph Zamboni, broke a tie for the 30th alternate by pulling one of two names out of a baseball cap held out for him while he averted his eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Candidates zigzagged across the state throughout the day, seeking to appear at as many of the in-person gatherings as they could. Shah, a former public health official, brought green \u201cShah for Senate\u201d signs and posed with supporters in Calais, Wiscasset and Augusta, while Kleban chatted with voters in Augusta and Farmington.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The process will continue Sunday as the other eight counties elect their delegates.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Peter Stein, a 67-year-old scientist and engineer who was elected as a delegate for Franklin County, volunteered for Jackson during his unsuccessful run for governor and previously supported Platner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cJackson is a lifelong Mainer and speaks like one. That matters to people,\u201d Stein said, adding, \u201cHe\u2019s incredibly intelligent, he puts smart people around him and he wears his heart on his sleeve.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>He drew a contrast between Jackson and Shah, who he said was too much of an outsider. Shah moved to the state in 2019 to lead the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Others were less certain whom they would back.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Anne Smith, 70, a retired translator who was also elected a delegate for Franklin County, said at the start of Saturday\u2019s meeting that she was still making up her mind.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI want to wait for another week, nearly a week, and weigh up all the options, listen to debates, do more research,\u201d said Smith before she was chosen as one of the county\u2019s nine delegates. \u201cAnd at that point I\u2019ll be ready to commit myself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>On Sunday in York County, where Jackson\u2019s campaign will hold its tailgate, more than 80 delegates will be elected at a meeting in Sanford, on the state\u2019s southwestern edge.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cIt looks like Troy\u2019s in the catbird position,\u201d said David Farmer, a Democratic consultant in Maine. \u201cIf his delegates hold true. And I have no reason to believe they won\u2019t.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=5236\">Red Sox grab 12th consecutive win on Wilyer Abreu\u2019s late go-ahead home run against Rays<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span>This article originally appeared in The New York Times.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democrats in Maine took a step on Saturday toward finding a Senate nominee to replace Graham Platner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Maine Democrats take step toward new Senate pick, with jolt of momentum for Jackson - 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