Politics
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Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson didn’t reach out to Gov. Janet Mills to ask for her support until after a debate earlier this month that sparked backlash for the Democrat when he told Republican Sen. Susan Collins to “shut up,” a source familiar with Mills’ side of the interaction said.
Mills announced on social media Thursday that she voted for Jackson and other Democrats down the ballot, saying they would “stand up for our values and stand up to Trump.”
But the reachout from Jackson to Mills, with whom he’s had a frosty relationship and who vetoed several of his priority bills when he was Maine Senate president, came after the governor had said consistently “for months” that she “was open to a conversation with Troy,” the source said.
The interactions between the campaign and Mills’ team, as described by the source, suggested flashes of lingering tension between the prominent Democrats just five days before Jackson faces Collins in a heated, tight race that could decide control of the Senate.
Jackson left a voicemail with the governor acknowledging he’d like to discuss an endorsement on Oct. 16. Mills was leaving Boston for Ireland that evening, but the pair’s teams discussed getting them together to talk about how she could help Jackson flip a seat that Collins has held for five terms, the source said.
“Earlier this week, Troy’s team indicated that a meeting would not fit into the campaign’s final stretch schedule,” the person said.
The Jackson campaign did not comment directly on the interactions with Mills and her team. David Farmer, a senior adviser to the Jackson campaign, said the candidate was grateful for Mills’ vote and appreciated her service to the state.
“Together, they passed some of the strongest abortion protections in the country, and the governor showed the country that Maine is ready and able to stand up to Donald Trump when it matters,” he said. “That’s the kind of fight he’ll bring to the [U.S.] Senate.”
Collins and her allies criticized Jackson, including in an ad, after he told her to shut up when she suggested a heckler during a debate was a supporter of the Democrat. Republicans have sought to paint Jackson as abrasive with women and tied the incident to previous dust ups while he was in Augusta and Bangor Daily News reporting on an assault charge when he was 19.
Jackson and several women lawmakers backing him have strongly disputed the claims. Some supporters of the former Allagash logger argued it was Collins who was rude by needling Jackson during a chaotic moment in the only debate featuring a live audience.
When she was still in the U.S. Senate primary against Graham Platner, whom Jackson later replaced, Mills targeted Platner’s disparaging social media remarks about women and sexual assault survivors. Many of Mills’ longtime supporters were reluctant to vote for Platner, who won the June primary after the governor’s campaign ran out of cash but later dropped out when an ex-girlfriend accused him of rape.
A coalition of labor organizers, progressives and many Maine local and state Democrats then rallied behind Jackson, who had placed third in the party’s gubernatorial primary, and nominated him to face Collins.
Jackson’s approach to Mills also came after he and other Democrats seeking to replace the governor tried to distance themselves from her earlier this year. Mills had backed Pingree, the former Maine House speaker and eventual nominee, in that five-way primary.
Out of the contenders at the time, Jackson had the most adversarial history with the governor. In the primary’s first debate, he pointed to prescription drugs as a failure and argued Maine could have had a drug price cap on the books for three years, while Colorado had just passed a similar bill.
Progressives who had hoped he would challenge Mills in 2022 were also frustrated by Mills’ prior vetoes of bills requiring the hiring of unions for public construction, and employment and arbitration laws.