Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

Democrats hoping to retake the U.S. Senate have been enjoying a run of good luck. With Election Day barely four weeks away, polls show the party’s candidates leading in North Carolina, Georgia, and even Texas. Michigan, which looked iffy after a divisive primary that pitted centrists against progressives, seems increasingly winnable. Political forecasters have shifted races in deep-red Kansas and South Carolina toward Democrats, too, even though both remain long shots. And Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to sink, creating formidable headwinds for any candidate with an R next to their name.

But then there’s Maine. In the Pine Tree State, Democratic former state Sen. Troy Jackson appears to be struggling in his bid to unseat longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins. A gold-standard poll last month found Collins leading Jackson by 3 points, triggering a mini-freakout among Democrats. Conducted by the New York Times and Siena University in partnership with the local Portland Press Herald newspaper, the survey was notably worse for Jackson than others taken before and since. But polls generally show a close race, a major letdown in a state that went for Kamala Harris by 7 points in 2024 and where the Democrat running for governor this year remains comfortably ahead. Collins is the only Republican senator up for reelection in a state that Harris won. That means a Jackson loss would hugely complicate Democrats’ path to reclaiming the Senate, forcing the party to bank on winning far more conservative states.

So what’s going on? Some blame Jackson’s lack of charisma and mealymouthed speaking style. Others say consultants have transformed his campaign into a Washington-run effort ill-suited to a political moment that favors outsiders. Still others point out that Collins has repeatedly managed to get reelected, Maine’s blue-state status be damned. And some think the Times/Siena/Press Herald poll may be off, making things look more dire for Jackson than they really are.

Yet if Jackson really is losing, it could also be because there’s a specter haunting his candidacy like something out of Stephen King. That specter is Graham Platner, Democrats’ original Senate nominee in Maine, whose gravel-voiced populist rhetoric caused national donors, progressive pundits, and 156,000 primary voters to swoon. Despite weathering a series of scandals—including revelations that he’d spouted offensive views on Reddit, gotten a Nazi tattoo as a drunken Marine, received significant financial support from his well-heeled father, and cheated on his wife shortly into their marriage—Platner was forced to drop out in July after an ex-girlfriend accused him of sexual assault. (He denies the allegations.)

Those scandals left Maine Democrats with little choice but to replace Platner on the ballot. After holding meetings around the state at which voters nominated delegates, the party overwhelmingly picked Jackson at a statewide convention in late July. But swapping candidates didn’t erase the coalition that chose Platner in the first place, and did so with the most votes any Democratic Senate primary candidate in Maine has ever gotten. That fact has locked Jackson into a contest shaped in his predecessor’s mold, giving him the unenviable task of beating a resilient incumbent from a standing start with someone else’s playbook.

Platner’s catastrophic candidacy continues to shadow Jackson in multiple ways. For one thing, the two-and-a-half-week scramble to replace him left Jackson with a shorter runway to make the case against Collins, whose nearly three decades in office have made her a ubiquitous figure. A former president of the Maine state Senate, Jackson ran for governor this year and finished third in the first round of the June primary, despite endorsements from Platner and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Yet in the Times/Siena/Press Herald poll, fully 10 percent of likely Maine voters said they hadn’t heard of Jackson or didn’t know enough to have an opinion about him, nearly seven times the number who said so of Collins.

Simply having to replace someone else may also be putting Jackson behind. History suggests that voters generally don’t look kindly on candidate switcheroos. It can make the previous nominee’s supporters feel cheated and invite charges that his replacement lacks a genuine democratic mandate. Perhaps for that reason, such swap-outs rarely happen and succeed even less often. According to the Times, the major parties have replaced Senate nominees in just nine races over the past three decades, and in only two of those cases did the replacement candidate go on to win the general election. It probably didn’t help that Platner’s exit from the race was maximally bridge-burning. Bucking advisers’ entreaties, he released an 11-minute video in which he accused a “corporate media system and the political establishment” of acting “as judge, jury and executioner” to force him out.

Platner’s transgressions have also created political dilemmas for Jackson, who repeatedly vouched for the oysterman’s character until the rape allegation ended his campaign. “I know there’s a lot of people in here that were campaigning for Graham,” Jackson told voters in August. “I wish none of this would’ve happened like this.” New York magazine reports that Democratic consultants’ efforts to separate Jackson from Platner—including advising their candidate not to say Platner’s name—have alienated many of the volunteers who originally latched onto Platner’s candidacy. But at the same time, two-thirds of Maine voters in the Times survey had an unfavorable view of Platner, about the same share who disapproved of Trump. Jackson has attacked Collins for failing to strongly oppose the president, but here he is talking wistfully about someone who’s about as unpopular.

The association has left Jackson vulnerable from the right, too. Collins-aligned ads have also sought to play up their connections; one showed footage of Jackson and Platner greeting one another like bros while campaigning. Yet disowning Platner entirely doesn’t appear to be an option, either. The on-the-fly delegate system the Maine Democratic Party devised to replace Platner seems to have left some liberal voters skeptical of Jackson unless he hews closely to his predecessor’s politics. “Why should frustrated Mainers like me trust you as the person to take over leadership of that movement?” one voter recently asked Jackson, referring to Platner’s campaign.

As that question suggests, ideology may be another way in which Platner’s ghost is haunting Jackson’s chances. Maine Democrats rallied around Jackson despite having other candidates to choose from in part because he seemed like the most natural heir to Platner’s progressive platform. Both support Medicare for All, taxing billionaires, and cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel. Yet even when Platner was running, it was far from clear that full-throated progressivism was the best path to beating Collins. She cruised to victory in 2020 thanks in part to a sizable chunk of suburban women who split their tickets between her and Joe Biden. Some self-identified Democrats who told the Times that they planned to vote for Collins this year cited her moderate reputation, and more Mainers viewed Jackson as extreme than saw Collins that way.

Which leads to what may be the biggest albatross Platner has thrown over the race: his example. Despite all his flaws, Platner rose from political obscurity to become his party’s nominee for Senate in less than a year, earning national headlines while handily beating Maine’s sitting governor and other candidates. He’s a gifted communicator who inspired enormous loyalty among rank-and-file voters and impressed longtime Democratic operatives, some of whom hailed him as the next coming of Barack Obama. Along the way, Platner and his advisers laid out a theory for how to finally beat Collins: an unabashedly economic populism articulated by a political outsider whose masculine workingman’s affect would win back the kinds of voters who have abandoned Democrats in the Trump era.

Jim Newell
How Hard Could the Blue Wave Hit?
Read More

Before he dropped out, there were signs that even Platner might not have been able to deliver on that lofty vision. In a Times/Siena/Press Herald poll from June, Platner was polling about as well with white working-class Mainers as had Sara Gideon, the establishment-backed Democrat who lost to Collins in 2020. Perhaps for that reason, some of Jackson’s advisers seem to be pushing him in a different direction. Yet precisely because Platner is no longer around to test it, his theory of the race continues to beckon other Maine Democrats like a siren call. So now the party is stuck, trying to win an election Platner shaped with a candidate who has to shoulder much of his predecessor’s baggage but lacks many of his talents.


This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only

Are the Polls Wrong Again? Or Is the Blue Wave a Blue Tsunami? We Took a Closer Look.


This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only

Democrats Are Struggling to Beat Susan Collins. You Can (Still) Blame One Man.

Democrats’ dreams of winning back the Senate may end up being the biggest casualty of that bitter inheritance. Of course, it’s true that Jackson’s team has also made some questionable choices about how to deploy their candidate of late. Last week, an ad that inexplicably showed Jackson sipping boba tea while criticizing Collins’ ties to “the one-percenters” drew online derision. Jackson has baggage all his own, too. While serving in the Maine senate, he reportedly yelled at a female colleague and threw a plastic water bottle in anger during a dispute over a bill. Jackson is also in a long-term relationship with his second cousin, with whom he has two children. In the latest Times poll, Jackson’s approval ratings are underwater, slightly below where Platner’s were about a week before he dropped out. Fully 12 percent of 2024 Harris voters say they plan to cast a ballot for Collins, compared to just 3 percent of 2024 Trump voters who back Jackson.

Had Platner stayed in, he might well have gone on to lose. And it’s certainly still possible that Jackson will overcome these deficits to win. But in politics, few things are more tempting than the road not taken.

You have remaining gift available this month. This gift link is valid through .

There was an error with your gift link. Please try again.

Copy link

Link copied!

Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month.Become a Plus Member