00:00Joining us now is my friend, former colleague, Alex Seitzwald.
00:02He's now deputy editor for Maine's Midcoast Villager newspaper.
00:06Look at that Maine-esque backdrop.
00:08And I confess, I always pick up the paper when I'm in Maine at the Hannafords or Shermans, wherever I
00:14find it available.
00:15Alex, great to see you.
00:16And before we start talking about what happened yesterday, where things go from here,
00:20let me play a bit of sound from Troy Jackson at that convention yesterday, talking about his path forward.
00:25There is a place in this campaign for all of you.
00:28There is work for you in this movement.
00:31And I will spend every day, now through November, earning that trust.
00:37Because today, we turn the page.
00:40Today, this becomes a general election campaign.
00:44And today, we win the work of defeating Susan Collins in November.
00:49Alex, let's just start with what the vibes were like in that center yesterday.
00:54You had the Democrats there.
00:55There was a lot of anxiety kind of going into this in the last couple of weeks about how much
00:59discord or debate or dissent there might be among Maine Democrats.
01:03It seems like that wasn't manifest at that event yesterday.
01:06Yeah, David.
01:07And thanks for having me.
01:08This was a fairly anticlimactic ending to a very tumultuous Democratic Senate primary that was originally supposed to end with
01:17Governor Janet Mills winning.
01:19She was the pick of Chuck Schumer in the Washington establishment.
01:22Then Graham Plattner, this unknown oyster farmer, came out of nowhere, totally dominated, won the primary with 72 percent of
01:28the vote just last month.
01:30June 9th was that primary date.
01:31But then, of course, allegations, really the last of many scandals, forced him to withdraw on July 10th, putting the
01:41Democratic Party in a really sort of unprecedented situation of having to pick a new nominee before a legal deadline.
01:48They had just a little over two weeks to do it.
01:50And it looked like it could be heading for this messy convention where delegates would battle.
01:56But it ended up that Troy Jackson just kind of out-organized all the other candidates, dominated the delegate selection
02:02process, and essentially ended up with a coronation yesterday.
02:05The vibes were good.
02:07People were excited and ready to move on and focus on Susan Collins after the entire primary.
02:15But these were the diehards in the room there.
02:18Those were your highest information, dedicated Democrats.
02:21Troy Jackson is still introducing himself to the rest of the party and the rest of the state.
02:26He just ran for governor in last month's primary, came in third.
02:30So that's what his remarks that you played are about, him still doing the work to introduce himself, get Democrats
02:38to know him, and then rally around him to defeat Susan Collins because it is going to be a huge
02:42battle.
02:43The Republicans already have a big advantage in fundraising.
02:46He's got to catch up to that.
02:48Catch up to the organizing, the hiring, and all the infrastructure that goes into winning.
02:52What's going to be one of the biggest Senate contests in the country?
02:55They're playing Noah Kahn, I understand.
02:57Northern attitude.
02:57I do love Noah Kahn.
02:59I'm not going to lie.
03:00It's very interesting to me because you think the Democrats would have learned this lesson with what happened in the
03:04presidential race.
03:05You know, clinging too long to a candidate that had some clear issues.
03:09I mean, this, Graham Plattner was snakebit from the beginning.
03:12And a very controversial candidate.
03:14You know, now they're scrambling in a race that it seems like Democrats could have won.
03:19But when you look at the polling, Jackson is up slightly, 49% to 46%.
03:23It seems to me like that's within the margin of error, especially with 3% still undecided.
03:28How much do you think the Plattner scandal, scandals, plural, are going to weigh down this candidate and continue to
03:35weigh down Democrats in the race, even if it's just when it comes to turnout?
03:38Yeah, I mean, the Republicans are certainly counting on the Plattner scandals to weigh down Jackson, who, like I said,
03:45is not the best well-known.
03:46There's 15% in that poll still don't have enough of an opinion about Jackson.
03:51So the RNC yesterday put out an AI video of Graham Plattner's face morphing into Troy Jackson.
03:58Another Republican group put out a TV ad in which it connects Jackson directly to Plattner.
04:03And that's a fair attack.
04:06They were very closely aligned.
04:08I actually went to an event where Graham Plattner was catering a Troy Jackson event.
04:14This was before Plattner was a known quantity at all.
04:17They had similar policies.
04:19They were both endorsed by Bernie Sanders in their primary.
04:21They campaigned together.
04:23That said, they're very different personalities.
04:26Troy Jackson is an actual blue-collar guy, not like Plattner claimed to be.
04:31He's from the interior of Maine, not the coast, about 250 miles from the coast.
04:36This tiny town of Allagash that had, I think, 237 people in the last census.
04:41Most prominent thing there is a chainsaw museum.
04:44He's a fifth-generation logger.
04:46So a very different personality, also with more insider experience.
04:52But this is going to be something that Jackson's going to have to deal with.
04:56Plattner, as he was withdrawing from the race, kind of wanted to tee things up for Jackson.
05:02And it took Jackson saying, I don't want anything to do with Graham Plattner for that to kind of go
05:08away.
05:08But those connections are going to remain very prevalent for a candidate who is not super well-known yet to
05:14a lot of Maine voters.
05:15Alex, last question here is about the introduction he has to make to voters' donors outside of the state of
05:20Maine.
05:20And I think you know this extremely well.
05:23A peculiarity of this race is how important it is on a national level.
05:26So, yes, Mainers are getting to know this candidate.
05:29They know Susan Collins, of course.
05:30But we saw Graham Plattner raise a ton of money from outside the state of Maine.
05:34I mean, you look at the war chest that Susan Collins and Affiliated or groups that back her have amassed.
05:39It's sizable.
05:40How is he going to do that?
05:42What do we know about the way in which he's going to be going hat in hand to people outside
05:45of the state of Maine to get money to back his candidacy?
05:47Troy Jackson.
05:49Yeah, Troy Jackson is not somebody who has a long history of, you know, hobnobbing with the wealthy and bringing
05:55in lots of money at all.
05:58Plattner was able to do a lot of fundraising with the small-dollar donors.
06:01But he's got a lot of ground to make up.
06:04There's something like $113 million already reserved from Republicans.
06:08That said, the best thing going for Jackson and really all he needs to say to Democratic donors is Susan
06:14Collins, control of the Senate.
06:16She is the most vulnerable Republican running for reelection this year.
06:20Maine is a blue state.
06:21It, you know, should, I'm doing air quotes here, vote Democratic.
06:25It should have a Democratic senator in office.
06:30That's the case he'll make and that he's going to say all we need to do is get our message
06:34out and bring those Democrats home.
06:37Susan Collins has had this ability, she's proven time and again, to win crossover voters.
06:43In 2020, Joe Biden won the state with nine percentage points and then she ended up winning with nine percentage
06:49points on her own.
06:50Same ballot, a bunch of voters crossed party lines.
06:52So he just needs to get enough money to get the message to those Democratic voters about the stakes for
06:59Trump, for the Supreme Court, for everything that comes with control of the Senate.
07:02So he's going to get it.
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