Troy Jackson, the Maine Democrat now challenging Sen. Susan Collins for a U.S. Senate seat, once told a room of voters he would have run for office "as a communist", a quip that looks less like a throwaway line the closer you examine his political evolution.
Jackson made the remark in 2017 while speaking to Cumberland County voters in Maine, explaining how he first entered politics as a Republican in 2000 despite holding views his own neighbors recognized as Democratic. A New York Post report surfaced a YouTube video of the exchange, in which Jackson offered a candid, and revealing, account of his ideological flexibility.
In the video, Jackson told the crowd he ran as a Republican in his first state House race simply because he "had no idea" about party labels. He lost that 2000 race to Democrat Marc Michaud. Two years later, he ran again, this time as an Independent, and beat Michaud. About two years after that, he officially became a Democrat.
The trajectory alone would be unremarkable in a state where party lines can blur. But Jackson did not stop at describing a slow migration leftward. He volunteered a punchline that Republicans have seized on as something more than a joke:
"I would've ran as anything, I would've ran as a communist. I just wanted to get to a place to do something to help the people in my area."
Jackson framed the line as self-deprecation, a former lumberjack laughing at his own political naivety. Yet his career since 2017 has tracked steadily toward the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, raising the question of whether the joke was less about where he started and more about where he was heading.
Jackson served as political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign in Maine and led Sanders' Maine operation again in 2020. Sanders later endorsed Jackson in an unsuccessful gubernatorial primary, an endorsement that nonetheless helped Jackson build the delegate support he would need when Democrats scrambled to replace their original 2026 Senate nominee, Graham Platner.
Platner's exit from the race was anything but voluntary. A former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, accused Platner of sexually assaulting her in 2021, telling Politico he had entered her home while drunk and forced her to have sex after she told him to stop. Platner denied any nonconsensual behavior, but the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, led by Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, called on him to withdraw immediately and said it would spend no money on the race if he stayed.
With Platner pushed aside, the party needed a replacement. Maine state law allowed Democrats to name a new candidate through a special nominating convention, and Jackson moved fast. He filed paperwork to run on July 7, 2026, the same day Sanders' political organization, Our Revolution, pulled its endorsement of Platner and shifted it to Jackson. Sanders himself personally called Platner to urge him to step aside.
Our Revolution framed the switch as a matter of protecting the progressive base that had already delivered a primary victory for Platner's platform. "Maine's progressives did not win the primary by a fluke or a narrow margin," a spokesperson said. "They won it in full force."
Jackson secured the vast majority of roughly 500 delegate slots across Maine's 16 counties over two days of delegate selection, making him all but certain to win the nomination at a Bangor convention before voters ever cast a ballot. The process drew criticism from both Republicans and some rank-and-file Democrats who had supported Platner.
One Platner-supporting Democratic voter, Lindsey Harwath, told Fox News that the delegate process felt rigged:
"We were not under the impression that people were going to be already coming into this process predetermined. That seems very undemocratic. That seems like rigging a process before you've done it."
RNC national press secretary Natalie Baldassarre piled on, calling Jackson "just another hypocritical socialist who talks like a logger but will cut deals with D.C. elites to game the system and get his way." The criticism pointed to a gap between Jackson's long public record of championing democratic participation and his willingness to accept a nomination that bypassed any public vote.
Not every Democrat sounded confident about the swap. Sen. Mazie Hirono, asked whether Jackson had a better chance than Platner against Collins, laughed before answering: "Let's just say that we have a candidate." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer struck a different tone, insisting flatly, "We're going to win Maine. Susan Collins is going to lose, and we are going to take back the Senate."
Jackson's progressive connections extend beyond Sanders' orbit. Brooklyn-based jewelry designer Alexis Bittar, known for crafting luxury products for Lady Gaga, Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, and Dua Lipa, recently dined with Jackson and posted about him on Instagram. Bittar, who had previously helped fundraise for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and had backed Platner, described Jackson in terms that would sit comfortably in a Democratic Socialists of America pamphlet:
"Troy like Graham is a Progressive Democrat believing and fighting against big Corporations lobbying in Government, protecting the working class, medicare for all, lower prescription costs again those f***n drug lobbies), stopping the USA from funding the genocide in Palestine and the list goes on."
The Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America had its own ties to Jackson. The organization previously endorsed his unsuccessful gubernatorial primary bid. And Discord records showed Jackson was scheduled to speak with the Maine DSA on July 20 for a Q&A session ahead of the special nominating convention, but the meeting was scrapped, with only a commitment to "reschedule soon."
Whether Jackson or the DSA pulled the plug is unclear. But the timing suggests at least one side recognized the optics of a Senate candidate sitting down with an explicitly socialist organization while trying to win a general election in a state that still rewards moderate temperament.
Jackson currently holds a 2.3 percentage point edge over Collins in the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate heading into the November 3 election. The race is considered one of the key contests in Democrats' effort to recapture the Senate majority, with Republicans holding a 53-47 advantage.
But Collins has a history of outperforming her polls. She won reelection in 2020 despite surveys that consistently showed her trailing Democrat Sara Gideon, and she has represented Maine in the Senate for more than two decades by projecting a centrist brand that resonates with the state's independent-minded electorate.
Jackson brings a different profile to the race. He led Maine's state Senate from 2018 through 2024. He ran two campaigns for Sanders. He drew an endorsement from the DSA. He courted a Brooklyn fundraiser who described him as fighting to stop U.S. funding related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And he has been accused of striking a female colleague with a water bottle, an allegation that speaks to a reputation for having a temper.
RNC spokesperson Kristen Cianci offered the sharpest summary of the Republican case against him in a statement to the New York Post:
"For years, Troy Jackson has slapped on whatever label will benefit him. Whatever he calls himself now, Communist, Socialist, Democrat, he is a snake oil salesman who is too radical for Maine."
Jackson's own 2017 words lend that argument more weight than any opposition ad could. He told Cumberland County voters that when he first ran for office, "everyone in my community at the time told me that, 'You're crazy, you're running as a Republican when you're a Democrat.' I didn't know." He added: "What I felt very much in my heart was that government was standing in the way of prosperity."
That last line, government standing in the way of prosperity, sounds like something a Republican would say on the stump. Jackson said it as a Democrat explaining why he used to be a Republican. The ideology may shift, but the instinct stays the same: pick the label that opens the door.
Maine voters will decide in November whether a man who has worn three party labels and joked about a fourth deserves a seat in the United States Senate. The joke landed in 2017. The question is whether the punchline still works when the stakes are real.
