Troy Jackson Wins Nearly All Delegates Picked Saturday in Maine's Scramble to Replace Graham Platner

Since Graham Platner exited the Senate race on July 10 amid a rape allegation he denies, Maine Democrats have been sprinting through an improvised process to pick his replacement before Sen. Susan Collins gets a free run. That sprint hit its first real test Saturday, and Troy Jackson dominated it.

The former Maine Senate president from Allagash won roughly 300 of the 319 delegate slots decided across eight counties, according to CNN. In Cumberland County, the state's largest and home to Portland, every one of the top 149 vote-getters came from Jackson's slate, CNN reported. He also swept all 44 delegates in Penobscot County and took 22 of 23 in Hancock County, Platner's home turf, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Jackson's rivals—Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former Maine CDC chief Nirav Shah, and former congressional candidate Jordan Wood—were drawing from the same pool of local activists and stepping on each other's lists. The Bangor Daily News reported Jackson's delegate slate shared only 10 to 20 names with any single rival's list, while Bellows, Shah and Wood overlapped with each other by more than 100 names in some counties.

That overlap caused real confusion on the ground. Lobbyist Michael Saxl, a Bellows backer, turned up on Shah's slate. Franklin County delegate candidate Michele Carey said she was listed as a Bellows supporter without ever agreeing to it. "I never signed up for that," she told the Bangor Daily News.

The Numbers Still Come With Caveats

The Portland Press Herald offered a more cautious read on the same data. Of the 170 delegates elected by Saturday evening across seven counties, only 48, about 28%, had publicly disclosed support for Jackson ahead of the vote. Just one other delegate had publicly committed, to Bellows. The rest hadn't stated a preference before Saturday's vote.

The distinction matters. Jackson is claiming a much bigger lead based on his own campaign's internal tracking of delegates who appeared on his released slate, not on delegates' own public statements. Delegates chosen this weekend are formally unpledged and not legally bound to vote for anyone, and the convention could still see multiple rounds of voting. Anyone assuming Jackson's slate translates one-for-one into convention votes is getting ahead of the actual rules.

Still, the organizational disparity is real and was visible in real time. Jackson told reporters in Augusta that some rival delegates were "100% committed to us" despite appearing on other campaigns' lists, chalking up the mess to a rushed process. "It is the process, and everything was late. They're rushed, hurried, and so it is what it is," he said.

What Happens Sunday and Next Saturday

Eight more counties were set to elect their remaining 181 delegates Sunday, bringing the total to 500 chosen by county caucus. The other 101 delegates of the 601-member convention come automatically from the Democratic State Committee.

Jackson needs a majority at the July 25 convention in Bangor to become the party's nominee against Collins in what CNN described as a must-win race for Democrats in their bid for control of the Senate.

Jackson's path to the nomination runs directly through Platner's old base. Jackson ran for governor earlier this year and placed third, and Platner ranked Jackson his No. 1 choice on the ranked-choice ballot in that primary. Both drew backing from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont. Jackson has leaned hard into that connection, telling former Platner supporters at his campaign launch that "the movement that you've built can win."

That inheritance was visible statewide Saturday. In Ellsworth, Hancock County Democrats gathered under a bagpiper's lead and passed around a card thanking Platner even as the party moved on without him.

The open question heading into Sunday's remaining eight counties and next Saturday's convention: whether Jackson's delegate math holds up when actual votes get cast in Bangor, given that the delegates aren't bound and the process, by every outlet's account, has been chaotic enough to produce delegates who didn't know which campaign claimed them.