Troy Jackson ends Susan Collins' 30-year Senate run, adding to Democrats' new majority
The former Maine Senate president and logger got the nomination in July and had three months to campaign.
A former logger from northern Maine has ended Susan Collins' nearly 30-year run in the Senate. Democrat Troy Jackson defeated the five-term Republican, NBC News projected early Wednesday, flipping the seat to Democrats.
Collins conceded early Wednesday. "It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Maine in the United States Senate," she said in a statement, ABC News reported. As of 11:36 a.m. Eastern, with about 87% of the expected vote counted, ABC's tally showed Jackson with 54% (346,909 votes) to Collins' 46% (299,243).
The win adds to the Senate majority Democrats clinched Tuesday night. Read our story on that win.
From the woods to the Senate
Jackson comes from Allagash, a logging town near the Canadian border, and ran on a working-class pitch backed by deep ties to Maine's unions, NBC reported. In 1998 he helped lead a logger blockade at the northern border to protest the hiring of Canadian workers.
His path through politics wasn't a straight line. He lost a 2000 race for the state House as a Republican, won a seat as an independent in 2002, later became a Democrat, and served as president of the Maine Senate from 2018 to 2024. He now supports "Medicare for All" and abolishing ICE, and he campaigned with Sen. Bernie Sanders in the race's final weeks, according to NBC.
Jackson wasn't supposed to be the nominee. He lost the Democratic primary for governor earlier this year, then won the Senate nomination in late July after Graham Platner left the race amid a sexual assault allegation, which Platner denied. Jackson had called on Platner to step aside. That left him about three months to campaign against a senator who had served since 1997.
The case against Collins
Collins had a long record of winning where her party struggled. In 2020 she won by 9 points while Trump lost Maine by 9, NBC reported. She chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and said she secured $1.5 billion for 672 Maine projects over the past five years.
Jackson made the race about whose side she's on. "Sen. Collins votes with Trump 96% of the time. The billionaire class is who she's been fighting for," he said at a debate. Collins has disputed that figure. He also hit her for helping advance Trump's tax and spending package, although she voted against its final passage over its Medicaid cuts.
Collins argued her clout was worth keeping. "To be effective in the Senate, you need knowledge, experience, seniority and relationships," she said at a debate.
What it means for working people
Maine just traded the Senate's top appropriator, a Republican who sometimes broke with Trump, for a union-backed former logger who wants government-run health care for everyone. Jackson's vote goes to a Democratic majority that will decide which of Trump's nominees get confirmed, including the judges and agency heads who enforce labor law.
He takes office when the new Congress convenes in January.
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