ALLAGASH, Maine (AP) — Troy Jackson stood alongside a small group of loggers deep in the northern Maine woods and stared down State Police troopers who threatened to arrest them. The lumberjacks had used their trucks to block access to the Quebec border in protest of Canadian loggers who were stealing their jobs by working for less. The blockade, which took place nearly 30 years ago, failed to stop the problem, leading Jackson to decide that he needed to try another way.“He realized that the only way to change, to change it from the inside, was to be involved,” said Hilton Hafford, a logger who stood with Jackson at the blockade.That moment set the fifth-generation lumberjack on a path into politics, eventually making him Maine’s unlikely Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. He faces longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in one of a handful of races that could determine control of the chamber in November.
Jackson’s campaign has focused on his ties to Aroostook County, a sprawling, wooded region known as “The County” to Mainers. It’s where Jackson, 58, says he watched hard-working people struggle to get ahead, fueling his fight against billionaires and corporations. It also is the place that has elected Jackson to the Legislature while supporting Republican Donald Trump for president.Defeating Collins, a five-term incumbent who has survived other efforts by Democrats to unseat her, will not be easy.
