Troy Jackson’s first Senate ad hits the airwaves

This week Mainers will start to see Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Troy Jackson’s first ad, in which he pitches that the state is ready for change. 

The ad is reminiscent of his first in the governor’s race. In both, Jackson drives a car as he narrates, highlighting his roots as a fifth generation logger and the son of a public school teacher. 

As he did in his first gubernatorial ad, Jackson discusses his participation in a 1998 border blockade in protest of timber landowners bypassing local workers to hire cheaper temporary Canadian labor — a political origin story he’s often repeated. But the Senate ad also takes specific aim at incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.  

“Susan Collins didn’t help us then,” Jackson says in the new ad, referring to the then-freshman senator, who was elected in 1996, during the blockade. “And she’s certainly not helping us now.”  

From the start, Jackson has made Collins a focal point, spending much of his speech after accepting the nomination in Bangor on June 25 focused on the longtime senator who hails from the same part of the state.

“Susan Collins and I both come from Aroostook County,” Jackson said during that speech. “But that is where the similarities end.”

In the ad, Jackson says, “We’re all getting crushed out here — healthcare, housing, heat. We’ve got to fight back. We’re all hungry for it. Maine is ready for a change.” 

Former Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner — who dropped out after an accusation of sexual assault, which he denied — shared many of the same progressive stances and had similarly made a pitch that his platform had universal appeal. 

After Jackson dominated his party’s nominating contest, he is now tasked with winning over Republicans and independents, who historically have been consequential in Maine’s general elections and weren’t allowed to participate in the nominating convention. 

The ad is backed by a seven-figure buy, as first reported by NBC News. Jackson’s campaign also announced it had raised more than $2 million in the two days after he officially secured the nomination, after surpassing $1 million just days out from the convention. 

But he still trails Collins, who had $11 million cash on hand, as of the last filing deadline, and the backing of major super PACs, including the the Senate Leadership Fund, which announced a six-figure ad blitz as soon as Jackson’s nomination became official.

Jackson is working to tie Collins to President Donald Trump, while Republicans are working to tie Jackson to Platner, who he’d campaigned alongside during his earlier bid for governor and endorsed up until the accusation of sexual assault. 

Tying Jackson to Platner is one part of Republicans’ planned attacks, which also include branding Jackson, former president of the Maine Senate, as a “political insider” and criticizing how Maine Democrats went about nominating him, according to an internal memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee obtained by Politico.