Why Democrats Should Be Most Worried About Troy Jackson (And It’s Not the Consultants) 

If the final election outcome reflected the average of polls sampled in the third and fourth weeks of September (not including any internal polls from campaigns or affiliated political action committees), Democrats would cede none of their own U.S. Senate seats and flip North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, Texas, Iowa, and Maine—two more than they need to take control of the upper chamber.  

However, Democrats can’t be cocky, since most poll margins are slim. The slimmest of those cited above is Maine, with Democrat Troy Jackson ahead of incumbent Republican Susan Collins by just half a percentage point. Further unsettling to Democrats is the New York Times/Siena College poll—the most respected of the included surveys—in which Jackson is behind three points. 

Why is Jackson struggling to win in a state Kamala Harris won while other Democrats are doing better in deep red territory? Yes, part of the reason is Collins’ longstanding, if overhyped, reputation as a rare moderate breed of Republican. But the case recently made by Rebecca Traister in New York, that Jackson’s campaign has been hobbled by bad advice from Beltway consultants fixated on appealing to centrist voters, doesn’t explain why James Talarico—who has said some of his past provocative comments on gender identity “missed the mark”—and Abdul El-Sayed—who after the primary became uninterested in saying the words “Hasan” and “Piker”—have better poll numbers. 

A more plausible reason for Jackson’s struggles exists. He is the only Democratic Senate candidate running to flip a Republican-held seat who has served in a state legislative majority, including, until last year, six years as president of the state Senate alongside the current Democratic governor. While all Democratic candidates are railing against the status quo and how politicians in power have failed to address the cost of living, Jackson carries the burden of being part of the status quo, owning a voting record, and being tagged—however unfairly and disingenuously—as part of the problem.  

As I wrote recently about the decline in per capita real disposable income over the past year, “if the general electorate is angry and attributes weakened purchasing power to Republican policies, then Republicans will have a difficult time getting them mad about something else—whether it’s Abdul El-Sayed campaigning with a radical Twitch streamer or James Talarico’s record of defending transgender rights—no matter how much money they spend.”  

However, in Maine, the Republican attacks on Jackson are not about culture war issues, but his state legislative voting record regarding taxes. The Senate Leadership Fund, a political action committee founded by associates of Senate Mitch McConnell, is running an ad that asks and answers, “How do we know Troy Jackson is going to raise taxes? Because he already has. Troy Jackson voted repeatedly to raise taxes: higher income taxes, higher sales taxes, higher property taxes … In Washington, Jackson wants to raise taxes again. Don’t let Troy Jackson make your life even more expensive again.” Another shamelessly attacks from the left: “Troy Jackson cut tax rates for the rich and raised taxes on working-class Mainers … Tax cuts for his rich donors, tax hikes for the rest of us.” “While raising your taxes, Jackson failed to pay his own taxes for years,” charges a third. 

Of course, these attacks are not on the level. Yes, Jackson paid $4,600 in back taxes last year, but he wasn’t trying to cheat on his taxes. His tax preparer appears to have made a mistake, and when he found the error, he paid the bill. The claim that Jackson supported a regressive tax bill twists his vote for a complicated 2009 tax reform that, overall, according to state estimates, would have given up to 90 percent of taxpayers a net cut. However, angry and perhaps misinformed voters revolted in 2010—the year of the Tea Party—and repealed the law in a referendum. Maine voters are surely angry again today, but some of the anger may be directed beyond Donald Trump’s Washington to include their state government as well. 

Some of Jackson’s record simply reflects the realities of governing at the state and local level, where services must be delivered, and budgets balanced—parameters that do not constrain federal lawmakers. The conservative publication Washington Examiner, in covering the Senate Leadership Fund’s negative campaign strategy, reported that the ads reference “votes he took while working in the state legislature that repealed local limits on property taxes, added a 10% sales tax increase, and a 14.3% increase in Maine’s meals and lodging tax. The latter was added through an appropriations bill that Jackson, at the time, said he voted on to avert a government shutdown. The [Jackson campaign] spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the tax hikes as part of that 2013 appropriations bill were temporary.” Most state and local representatives, if they are in office long enough, will have to raise taxes at some point to maintain the services their constituents rely on, especially because federal tax rates rarely go up and, in turn, federal aid is chronically unreliable. 

On top of ads charging Jackson with hiking taxes, another prong of the Republican ad blitz accuses him of a conflict of interest while serving as state Senate president with his son, a lobbyist. “Troy Jackson likes to … keep it in the family,” snarks one ad’s narrator. The line winks at the fact that Jackson’s longtime romantic partner is his second cousin, while explicitly claiming “Jackson changed his positions” to cater to his son’s clients. Insinuating questions are raised—“Was it a coincidence or was something corrupt?”—without bothering to provide evidence to support an answer. (The shocking truth: Jackson’s son was a lobbyist for the Maine Gun Safety Coalition when he changed his position on gun control in the aftermath of the Lewiston mass shooting.) 

Jackson must carry the burden of being associated with state government without the benefit of having run statewide in a general election and familiarizing himself with voters beyond his rural district. Many voters are just learning who Jackson is, and Republican media manipulators are bankrolling their education. The last Democrat who tried to take out Collins, former Speaker of the Maine House Sara Gideon, faced a similar barrage of negative ads that complicated her ability to introduce herself statewide. 

We have evidence that the Republican ads have left a mark. Two late September polls that test Maine’s U.S. Senate race also include favorability scores. One is the New York Times poll with Jackson trailing by three. The other is a University of New Hampshire poll with Jackson leading by four. Yet both polls have Jackson’s favorability eight points below his unfavorability. The difference in the two surveys is Collins’ favorability, which is slightly above water according to the Times but well below water according to UNH. Whether Jackson wins or loses appears to hinge on how much voters hate Collins, not on how much they like him.  

The favorability scores of El-Sayed and Talarico have held up better under their respective Republican assaults. Neither is above water in every poll, but El-Sayed has a net positive rating in polls conducted by the Times and Suffolk University, and Talarico has the same according to Marist College and Emerson College. (All four outlets are deemed “Select Pollsters” by the Times.) 

Republicans have, at times, criticized the policy positions of El-Sayed and Talarico as potential cost-of-living drivers. But El-Sayed has never held an elected position, and Talarico has been powerless in the Texas legislative minority, so neither can be held responsible for current affordability frustrations. That leaves Republicans with little else to try besides changing the subject to hot-button cultural issues, but that appears to have limited utility when voters are livid about having less money in their pockets.  

What can Jackson do about his predicament? Silver bullet solutions are not available. He can’t snap his fingers, reverse the Republican money advantage, and overwhelm Collins on the airwaves. Republican Party-affiliated committees are outspending their Democratic counterparts by more than two-to-one. As a last-minute nominee, named at a state convention after Graham Platner withdrew, Jackson’s own fundraising operation was years behind the Collins machine. Any attempts by Jackson to better explain his record in Augusta only feed the Collins strategy of making the race about anything that isn’t her record abetting Donald Trump. Social media posts cost far less money, but video clips of Jackson sipping boba tea like a tween while rolling his eyes at the negative ad onslaught probably won’t deliver much bang for the buck. The best he can do is keep his focus on the Collins record and hope, for once, Maine voters will care more about her votes on national issues than her local earmarks and puncture her reputation for moderation and bipartisanship. 

But any sort of intra-party premature blame game is silly. Consultants aren’t why Jackson is having difficulty defeating a wily incumbent who has long cultivated a bond with constituents that can withstand political pendulum swings. 

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