Maine Students Turn Out for Troy Jackson and AOC

PORTLAND, MAINE – “They’ve been afraid of a waitress in the House and a logger in the United States Senate.”

Who’s afraid? People like Maine’s incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s provocative insight was one of numerous highlights of the Troy Jackson–helmed “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall on Thursday in Portland, Maine.

With the 30-year Senate veteran facing an unexpectedly difficult battle to keep her seat, Jackson, a logger and former state Senate president, continues to hold his own despite being outspent by mega-millions, and treated as something of a curiosity by the national media for his working-class background rooted in rural northern Maine. In terms of economic history, he likely has more in common with AOC, who worked as a waitress and bartender to help her mother stave off foreclosure on the family home after her father died, than he does with almost any other member of Congress.

The New York Democrat portrayed class as a theme running through campaigns across the country. A vote for a logger and former state Senate president means a radical change from the rule of Collins and those like her in the Senate. “It breaks the rules for Troy to go in there,” she said.

A relaxed Jackson had an easy rapport with the frank and energetic AOC at the State Theatre, a Depression-era downtown venue. Together, they made quick work of their opening remarks and tackled an hour’s worth of wide-ranging, thoughtful questions from a pumped-up crowd dominated by hundreds of young people.

Maine, one of the keys to possible Democratic control of the Senate, has been more combustible than anticipated after Jackson replaced the disgraced Graham Platner in July. Jackson continues to gain ground on Collins in the polls, and delivered a respectable showing in their four debates. He forced the incumbent to defend not only her decision to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh but her procedural votes to support Trump administration legislation like the One Big Beautiful Bill, which is already wreaking havoc in rural Maine communities.

Meanwhile, Collins and former Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia independent, visited a New Balance shoe manufacturing plant in Norway, Maine, on Wednesday. Still defending her voting record, the Maine incumbent took a few minutes to throw shade at Jackson and AOC for campaigning with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). They are “from the far left of the party,” she complained. “Anyone who works the halls of Washington knows she’s not controlled,” Manchin said as the two left the brief news conference after a question about Collins’s support for President Trump’s priorities.

After his departure from the Senate, Manchin moved to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. The firm recently closed down two of Maine’s largest paper mills in the towns of Jay and Bucksport. Manchin contended that he did not know about Apollo’s role.

“Susan has been in office since I was three years old,” said Emily Austin, a student at Central Maine Community College in Auburn. “She has had time and opportunity. Change can also be a really good thing as well, too. I have complete confidence that [Jackson] is going to beat Susan, and I’m really excited for that.”

One top concern for students is health care, and progress toward a Medicare for All program. Both Jackson and AOC underlined a truism about Congress somehow always finding trillions for yet another endless war, but never finding the trillions to improve Americans’ lives with reliable, affordable health coverage. One high school student asked if Jackson would pitch Medicare for All to break through the “political socialization” and “propaganda” causing rural and older Americans “to be scared of things like that.”

“When do you graduate? Because I have a job for you!” Jackson replied, before explaining that he hears constantly from people who assume that their health insurance is going to be taken away.

The challenge, he says, is convincing the public that they’ll get insurance coverage that’s better for them while hospitals will still receive payments that are commensurate with the care they’re providing. The billionaires invested in the health care status quo, Jackson said, “want to preserve a greedy, dirty, scumbag system that they have right now because it works for them; it doesn’t work for us.”

Another student talked about a sibling consigned to Medicaid disability service wait lists for “years at a time” and prodded Jackson for a solution. He admitted that Maine has difficulties providing services because of a scarcity of providers. “We don’t pay those people like the professionals that they are, and we have put more money into that, so we have more people to give the services.” Jackson wanted to see those services handled through a Medicare for All system, which he called “a priority for me.”

A poignant query came from a transgender University of Southern Maine student: “A lot of trans people in America feel that we have been abandoned by the Democratic Party, that we are a losing issue, that it’s not worth defending us. What do you say to that?”

AOC explained that many politicians feel pressured to take sides when confronted with the scare tactics surrounding trans individuals. Viewing the attacks on trans girls as “a strategic decision” to distract from another key goal, curbing the rights of all girls, she pointed out that “in focusing and trying to gin up hatred against trans Americans, the Trump administration, while everyone was focused on that, quietly defunded the [Title IX civil rights enforcement division].”

Similarly, she warned that the massive infusion of funding for ICE’s immigration crackdown is a back door to curbing Americans’ privacy rights and a way to legitimize practices like warrantless searches. She observed that with the attempt to denaturalize and deport Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), both the Department of Justice and the FBI have been “weaponized and compromised.” Should Democrats regain control of Congress, she called for “day one investigation into all of these agencies.” “We will never get our country back if we allow criminals to have cabinet seats in the United States of America,” she said to cheers and a standing ovation.

At one point, she congratulated Jackson for having the courage to appear with her in Portland. “There are a lot of consultants out here in Washington that would tell him, do not sit on a stage next to her.” Notably, no one asked AOC about her own political future.

After the rock star–level reception for Jackson and AOC on the eve of a crucial election, there are still questions about young people’s willingness to show up and vote. Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) has reported that as of September, 2 percent more young Americans ages 18 to 29 registered to vote in this year’s midterm contests than in 2022. But in state-level data, we see that Maine experienced a 12 percent decline in number of young people registering to vote, ranking fourth behind Massachusetts, Louisiana, and Kentucky. Typically, Maine has had some of the country’s strongest youth voting patterns.

As Sophie Garner was packing up the Maine Democratic Socialists of America information table after the town hall, I asked her what she’s hearing from friends about voting. “People are fed up with the system and that goes far beyond two parties and far beyond this election alone,” said Garner, a Portland resident. “But people are so fed up, that those who have never been invested in politics before feeling like they have to be, and therefore they’re showing up. I have friends who have never voted before that are trying to figure out how to early vote because they are afraid of what’s going to happen on November 3.”

Keren Rubonek, a student at Central Maine Community College in Auburn, cited the civil rights movement as her motivation for voting. “I know people who look like me didn’t have the opportunity to vote a couple of decades ago, and that was a right that people fought and died for.”

Eric Hubley, a Lewiston senior serving as an event volunteer, acknowledged that the Portland town hall was exceptional, but he had concerns about the youth vote as well. “Boomers are probably 75 percent of the people that I see being active, and I realize they have more time,” he said. “I would be pulling for the younger people to dig in a little bit. This change is going to impact them, too.”