In the days immediately after Democrat Graham Platner dropped out of Maine’s senate race amid an allegation of sexual assault, it looked as though selecting his replacement might be something of a free-for-all. Ahead of an unprecedented convention to choose a new nominee on July 25, 13 Democrats threw their hats in the ring. But a large majority of delegates who will vote at the convention (mostly selected by voters at county meetings last weekend) quickly rallied around Troy Jackson. A former state senate president who had unsuccessfully run for governor earlier this year, Jackson is now almost certain to face Republican Susan Collins this fall, in a crucial race for national Democrats. Like her, he hails from Aroostook County, the vast, sparsely populated northern section of the state. To add to his blue-collar bona fides, Jackson is also a former logger who made his name participating in a blockade to protest the hiring of temporary Canadian workers over locals — a show of the kind of economic populism that Platner espoused. But reports have also emerged that Jackson can be temperamental and domineering.

To get some perspective on who Jackson is, I spoke with Mike Carpenter, another Democrat from the state’s northern reaches. Carpenter has been involved in Maine politics for more than five decades, including a stint as attorney general in the 1990s. (He currently serves as a probate judge.) He has known Jackson for a relatively small portion of that time, but endorsed his gubernatorial run earlier this year. Carpenter describes a serious, rough-hewn legislator who he believes can defeat Collins in November.

You’re a Maine politics veteran. You’ve been in the state house, you’ve been in the state senate twice, you’ve been attorney general. Troy Jackson has also been around for quite a while. What is your overall impression of him?I never met Troy Jackson until, I think, the campaign of 2014. They coerced me into running for the senate in 2014. That would have been my first contact with Troy. I don’t remember much about it. He was there, and they were helping me out with some money and some strategy. I lost that election. A lot of help they were, huh? Then in 2016, they talked me into it again over the objections of my secretary, who’s........

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