Dem who abandoned Platner after sex assault claim now scrambles for his voters

Maine's newly anointed Democratic Senate nominee is trying to rally his scandal-plagued predecessor's voters in his bid to topple Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. But Maine Senate Democratic nominee Troy Jackson has a problem: he yanked his support of Graham Platner, as many local and national Democrats did. It wasn't always that way between the two. Both candidates, Jackson then running for governor while Platner ran for Senate, endorsed one another. Jackson stood by his ally through a bevy of scandals until a sexual assault allegation proved the death knell for Platner's campaign last month. Now Jackson has to curry favor with the progressive's base of tens of thousands of Maine voters for a shot to beat the formidable Collins. To do that, Jackson over the weekend appeared to be running back toward Platner, not away from him. BERNIE-BACKED MAINE DEMOCRATIC SENATE HOPEFUL SQUIRMS OVER PAST GRAHAM PLATNER SUPPORT And he never really wanted to run for the Senate, the Midcoast Villager reported, but felt it was important to pick up the mantle of progressive politics that Platner had suddenly dropped. "I wish nothing would have happened with Graham," Jackson said in Belfast, Maine, situated in Waldo County, where Platner's strongest base of support appeared during his primary victory. "I wish, you know, things would have continued like all that. It would have been much better," he continued. "But when it did, I just didn't want to see all these people that are looking for somebody to fight for them go away once again broken and hopeless." National Republicans teed off on Jackson for trying to gin up support among Planter's voter bloc. "Troy Jackson is keeping an alleged rapist with a history of glorifying violence on a pedestal to boost his campaign as he desperately tries to revive Graham’s radical base that got rolled when Chuck Schumer replaced Platner with Jackson," National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Bernadette Breslin told Fox News Digital. PLATNER DROPS OUT OF CRUCIAL SENATE RACE AFTER BOMBSHELL RAPE ALLEGATION TORPEDOES CAMPAIGN Before taking over as nominee, Jackson and Platner were allies on the campaign trail. Platner wholeheartedly endorsed him, and told a crowd of voters in May that he ranked Jackson first on his ballot. "Troy and I are entirely aligned on labor issues and organizing issues, and I think our policies align quite closely," Platner said in a video posted by the Maine AFL-CIO. "And as many of you probably know, organized labor is a key to what I think the future of American politics is." Roughly a month later when the final allegation hit, Jackson, like several other Democrats both in-state and across the country, called on Platner to exit the race. "The allegations against Graham Platner are serious, credible, and deserving of full accountability — they cannot and must not be ignored," Jackson said in a statement on X at the time. "There is a powerful movement of working-class people in the state of Maine," he continued. "For the sake of that movement, and the millions of Americans who have put their trust in it, Graham must now step down." Jackson has had his own scandals, however. He has most recently come under scrutiny for his temper following a water bottle-throwing incident while he served in the Senate, and after the discovery of a 1988 police record in which Jackson was alleged to have assaulted a man and pushed his longtime partner, Lana Pelletier, who according to records is his second cousin, during a late-night confrontation. SUSAN COLLINS DROPS BRUTAL REMINDER OF DEM RIVAL ROCKED BY ACCUSATIONS Collins declined to weigh in on the police record when asked by Fox News Digital earlier this month, arguing that was up to Jackson. "But I will say that, based on widespread reporting, it appears that he struggles to control his temper," Collins said. Meanwhile, there’s an effort afoot to get Platner to register as a write-in candidate in Maine. The deadline to do so came and went on Tuesday without the embattled former candidate submitting his name. A website, writeingrahamforme.com, was launched as op-eds by Scott Niemi have made the rounds in local newspapers in Maine pushing for Platner to submit himself as a write-in, given that under Maine law write-in votes for an undeclared candidate don’t count. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP Niemi argued in the Bangor Daily News that writing in Platner would prove to establishment Democrats that they don’t get to "overrule the will of Maine voter," and that because of Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, they could rank Jackson second to "keep the seat competitive." "If Graham does not have enough votes to advance during tabulation, those ballots are not wasted, they transfer over to Jackson in the next round if he is ranked second," Niemi wrote. "I believe it is a mathematically solid plan to defeat Collins come election time."