‘Maine has been through a lot’: Democrats sharpen pitch to women after turmoil in must-win Senate race

By Patrick Svitek, CNN

(CNN) — A month after he became the Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, Troy Jackson is ramping up his appeals to women and voters who care about abortion rights, looking to sharpen a contrast with Republican Sen. Susan Collins that has long been at the center of the race.

The task of building female support is an urgent one for Jackson after months of intraparty turmoil in Maine threatened to demoralize some in the crucial voting bloc. The state’s female governor, Janet Mills, dropped out before the primary, and the eventual winner, insurgent Graham Platner, saw his campaign collapse after a rape allegation that he denies. Now, Republicans are working to tie Jackson to his predecessor – and his problems with women.

“Maine has been through a lot,” said Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom for All, who is set to visit Maine on Wednesday evening to unveil the group’s endorsement of Jackson.

Democrats are now hoping to turn the focus to Collins, who describes herself as a “pro-choice” Republican, and her key vote to confirm one of the Supreme Court justices who ultimately signed onto the Dobbs decision, which ended federal abortion rights. Jackson has his own mixed record on the issue – once deeply opposed to abortion rights before becoming more of a supporter in the last decade.

“We are not strangers to supporting candidates who made major evolutions on abortion rights,” Timmaraju said, pointing to former President Joe Biden as perhaps the most prominent example. “We feel like Troy has more than made up for his history by being the kind of critical champion and partner to Janet Mills, a critical leader in the Dobbs response.”

Reproductive Freedom for All endorsed Mills the primary but never backed Platner after his win.

Jackson’s campaign on Wednesday is also set to announce a “Women for Troy” coalition that includes hundreds of women from all 16 counties in the state. And earlier this week, Jackson’s campaign started airing a TV ad where his mother, Colleen McBreairty, testifies to his character over images of him meeting with other women in his life.

“Women should support Troy Jackson because he supports allowing women to make their own decisions about their own bodies,” Caroline Mitchell, a member of the coalition from Oxford County, said in a statement. “Women should not support Susan Collins because she has enabled the government to make that decision for women.”

The new efforts come at a crucial time in the race, which Democrats see as key to flipping the Senate in November. Jackson is still playing catch-up on fundraising, raising $2 million in the two days after he captured the nomination in late July, while Collins entered that month with an $11 million war chest.

Female voters are a highly competitive group in Maine. Exit polls show they made up 3 in 5 voters in Collins’ last reelection campaign, when she narrowly carried the group against Democrat Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. In a Fox News poll released earlier this month, female voters were closely split, with 50% backing Jackson and 46% backing Collins.

Democrats believe this election is fundamentally different because this is the first time Collins is on the ballot since the 2022 Dobbs decision. Collins voted four years earlier to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the majority on the decision.

The senator’s allies say the Democratic enthusiasm around the issue of abortion overlooks her unique relationship with women voters in Maine, who they say respect her thoughtful approach to issues even when they disagree with her.

“Susan Collins has always been pro-choice and a champion for Maine women,” Collins campaign spokeswoman Blake Kernen said in a statement highlighting Jackson’s once-close relationship with Platner and his past opposition to abortion rights. “But because she is a Republican, the national groups continue to twist themselves into a pretzel to support these male candidates with terrible records.”

A disciplined anti-Collins message

Tuesday marked one month since Jackson vastly out-organized his competition and won the nomination to replace Platner at a party convention in Bangor. Since then, the national spotlight on the race has dimmed, and Jackson has been less of a lightning rod for controversy compared to Platner.

To some of his supporters, that’s just fine. They see him as running as more of a generic Democrat — in a Democratic-leaning state, in a national environment that favors the party.

“He’s got the right strategy, and it is a departure from Graham in just really focusing on Susan Collins and the stakes of this election,” said Jordan Wood, one of Jackson’s former rivals for the replacement nomination. “In a state like Maine, the best strategy, uniquely for this race, is you make it a question for voters, ‘Who do you want in control of the Senate?’”

“In this moment, Maine is not a state you’ve got to get super creative with,” Wood added.

That is not to say Jackson is the most conventional Democrat. A longtime logger who has spent over two decades in state politics, his supporters say he mixes Platner’s progressive, labor-aligned politics with Mills’ establishment appeal.

Jackson, who was raised Catholic, has also stood out for his evolution on abortion. He has said he was “wrong” to oppose abortion rights early in his political career, and after the Dobbs decision, he worked with Mills to further expand abortion access in the state.

“When Roe was overturned, I didn’t wring my hands or make excuses — I got to work,” Jackson said in a statement.

Timmaraju said her group has had “tough conversations” with Jackson and now feels “really, really confident” in his credentials on the issue.

Platner still hovers over the race, with Republican ads replaying images of him campaigning alongside Jackson earlier this year when Jackson was running for governor.

Wood had argued during the race for the replacement nomination that Jackson’s ties to Platner would be a liability. But in an interview this week, Wood suggested Jackson has done a good job addressing the issue, giving voice to the “betrayal” many Maine Democrats felt – Jackson has said Platner lied to him about his past – and then moving on to a disciplined anti-Collins message.

Platner is set to reemerge next month to speak at a Labor Day rally near his coastal hometown of Sullivan. A small group of former supporters tried to recruit him to run as a write-in candidate, including by meeting with him in person Sunday, but the deadline to register as a write-in candidate passed Tuesday.

While Jackson has said he does not want Platner’s support, he still lacks the endorsement of another major figure in this year’s intraparty saga: Mills. She declined to endorse Jackson in a local TV interview about a month ago, and a spokesperson for the governor did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Platner and Trump loom

Republicans’ attacks on Jackson make it clear that they view female voters as up for grabs.

While Collins’ campaign has largely aired positive ads, a well-funded super PAC, Pine Tree Results PAC, has taken the lead on attacking Jackson. Its ads highlight his past ties to Platner and reports that he clashed with female colleagues in the state legislature and pushed his partner, Lana Pelletier, during a fight with another man in 1988. Jackson has denied ever being violent with Pelletier or any other women.

“First it was Graham Platner’s problem with women,” a woman says in one of the super PAC’s ads, before a second woman says, “And now – Troy Jackson.”

Democrats would much rather talk about Collins. When Planned Parenthood launched its first ads in the race earlier this month, they did not mention Jackson and instead featured a woman who previously voted for Collins saying she regrets her support for the senator, citing in part her recent comments standing by her vote for Kavanaugh.

Lance Dutson, a Maine GOP strategist who has worked on Collins’ previous campaigns, said he doubted such attacks would be decisive in a race where Collins has spent decades earning the trust of some female voters.

“I think that really, really mitigates the lightning-bolt effect that issues like Kavanaugh or others could have,” he said.

Dutson said he thought Collins’ relationship with Trump – in a state that has rejected him three times – was “far more” important to the race. Collins is an occasional critic of Trump policies, most recently warning that his latest tariffs on Canadian imports would “increase costs for Maine families.”

Collins has skipped two recent appearances in her state by Vice President JD Vance, mostly recently Tuesday, when he visited a manufacturing facility outside Bangor. Each time, Vance has shouted her out from the stage and sought to portray as an important – if sometimes frustrating – part of the GOP coalition.

“Whenever I’m in Maine I’ve got to give Susan a little bit of crap because, as you know, Susan is the most independent member of the United States Senate, and as the president of the … Senate, she sometimes makes my job just a little bit harder,” Vance said in Brewer. “But she makes it harder because she is coming to work every single day and fighting not for a political party … [but] for the great people of Maine.”

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