Maine progressive Shawn Jackson mounts governor bid after primary loss

Troy Jackson moved Tuesday to form a Senate exploratory committee, keeping open a possible bid to replace Graham Platner as Democrats scramble to hold one of the party’s top Senate targets in Maine.

The filing came after Jackson, the former Maine Senate president from Allagash, finished third in the June 9 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Jackson, a fifth-generation logger, launched his 2026 campaign on May 19, 2025, in Kittery near Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, leaning on a labor-populist message built around lowering costs, raising wages, defending labor rights, tackling housing and childcare, and creating a statewide health-care plan.

He first became a prominent figure in the 1998 logging blockade along the Maine-Canada border, when loggers protested low wages and the use of Canadian contractors. He served in the Maine House from 2002 to 2008, then in the Maine Senate from 2008 to 2014 and again from 2016 to 2024. He led the chamber from 2018 until reaching his term limit in 2024.

Jackson’s campaign has been backed by Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Dan Osborn, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the Mi’kmaq Tribal Council, and the Maine Chapter of the Democratic Socialists, along with more than 90 current and former local elected officials and 45 local labor unions, including the Maine AFL-CIO, Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses United, and Maine State Building Trades. If elected governor, he would establish tribal sovereignty on his first day in office.

The Senate maneuver followed pressure on Platner after a sexual assault allegation and left Democrats weighing replacements under Maine’s ballot rules. State law allows a replacement nomination only if the original nominee withdraws by 5 p.m. on the second Monday in July, with a replacement deadline at 5 p.m. on the fourth Monday in July. The Maine Democratic Party voted to hold a nominating convention to choose a replacement if Platner withdraws, with roughly 600 delegates expected.

He appeared on the same stage with Platner at a May rally in Portland and introduced him there.

A University of Maine political scientist described Jackson as an “old school, New Deal, mid 20th century labor Democrat.” Jackson won support for universal school meals, one of the first statewide guarantees of free breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students when the law was signed on July 1, 2021, and for bipartisan action on aerial herbicide spraying, childcare investments and Maine Veterans’ Homes.