Democrat Troy Jackson unseats Susan Collins in Maine U.S. Senate race

Democratic challenger Troy Jackson is projected to win the Maine U.S. Senate seat currently held by GOP incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, according to the Associated Press, which called the race.

Early Wednesday, with 72 percent of the votes counted, Jackson was winning with about 53% of the vote against 47% of the vote for Collins, with third-party candidates and write-ins accounting for the remainder. Collins told supporters she called Jackson to concede the race early Wednesday morning.

Who is Jackson? Jackson became Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee after his predecessor, Graham Platner, suspended a scandal-fraught campaign in July. Jackson lost a gubernatorial bid in the primary election, but quickly pivoted to the Senate race with several Platner-aligned items including Medicare for all, taxation of billionaires, abolition of ICE. He is a former logger and state legislator.

If reelected, Collins would have been the most senior Republican woman in the Senate. Collins has served five terms in the Senate, and would have turned 80 by the end of her sixth term, if reelected. She chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and is a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and Intelligence Committee. Collins is pro-abortion, but throughout her reelection campaign she faced criticism from Jackson surrounding her critical vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court—where he eventually helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

Dig Deeper: Read my report in The Stew about Jackson’s last-minute nomination.