Maine Democrats Endanger Democracy By Nominating Experienced Candidate

Maine Democrats escalated their assault on electoral stability Saturday by selecting former state Senate President Troy Jackson to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins, recklessly replacing Graham Platner with a candidate who has held public office, won elections and displayed a working familiarity with government. Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from northern Maine, received 566 delegate votes to his opponent’s five, producing the kind of dangerously conclusive result political professionals call “counting.” He replaces Platner, who won the June primary before withdrawing amid a sexual assault allegation he denied, depriving Republicans of the orderly campaign they had planned around discussing nothing else.

The substitution leaves Collins facing the terrifying prospect of running against a Democrat who can discuss legislation and jobs involving actual physical labor. Republican strategists said the combination represented an obvious breach of Senate tradition, under which candidates must demonstrate either no practical skills or enough inherited wealth to avoid acquiring them. “I’m deeply concerned that Democrats chose a candidate supported by nearly all their delegates, because democracy depends on Democrats nominating someone Republicans can defeat without adjusting the television ads,” Collins said, offering the measured reassurance that has allowed her to express concern about every crisis while remaining safely uninvolved in its resolution. Constitutional scholars added that the Founders never anticipated a senator who could operate a chainsaw, locate Aroostook County and complete a sentence without first consulting a donor.

National Republicans condemned Jackson’s nomination as a backroom coronation, noting that his 566-to-5 victory lacked the suspense normally supplied by months of chaos, leaked opposition research and consultants converting campaign funds into invoices. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer also reportedly supports the radical strategy of placing a nominee on the ballot before the legal deadline, a procedural maneuver critics compared to showing up for work before lunch. Maine voters must now choose between preserving Collins’s seat as a federally protected monument to cautious disappointment or sending Washington a logger who may expect the Senate to produce something besides concerned statements. Maine Democrats have therefore confirmed that electoral extremism now means nominating a candidate who knows how to do the job.

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