Three Keys to a Democratic Victory in Maine

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Inside Washington

The three keys to a Jackson victory in Maine

Today we’re focused a bit north of Washington, D.C., where Maine Democrats are rallying around a new presumptive nominee for U.S. Senate to replace disgraced Democrat Graham Platner: logger and former State Senator Troy Jackson. Maine political insiders see some positive signs in how quickly the party has resolved the chaos surrounding Platner’s exit. But Jackson, they add, now has a tough task ahead.

Over the weekend, the state Democratic Party’s delegates election process delivered Jackson a majority of the 601 delegates who will officially nominate the Democratic candidate for Senate, making Jackson’s victory in the official nominating convention on Saturday all but certain. Anthony Emerson, a 31-year-old Portland resident who’s been active in Maine politics since middle school, was running to be a delegate for Cumberland County, but wasn’t selected. When we spoke on Saturday, Emerson still thought Nirav Shah had a decent chance of winning a formidable number of delegates. By the time Monday rolled around, Jackson’s main opponents had dropped out and coalesced around him. That’s a good thing, Emerson told me. “It shows enthusiasm for his campaign, and that his campaign can organize people efficiently,” he said.

Emerson said that the energy at the virtual Cumberland County delegate election meeting was slightly anxious. “But I feel like that’s just Democrats for you,” he added. “We’re always worrying. Especially because Collins overperformed expectations so much in 2020.”

Collins’s decisive, nine-point victory over Democratic state Representative Sara Gideon in 2020, despite trailing in every major poll in the lead-up to the election, is the stuff of Democratic nightmares. But David Farmer, a Maine political analyst I spoke to, said 2026 could be different—if Jackson manages a few key tasks. Here are the ones he highlighted:

1. Get Democrats to turn out. It sounds obvious, but voters are less likely to cast ballots during a midterm election than a presidential election. Getting Democratic voters to the polls should be possible: Democrats in the state have been activated by the two-week process of finding a replacement for Platner, and the party has a monopoly on attention. The murder of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero at the hands of an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13 will also likely galvanize pro-immigrant Democrats to head to the polls.

2. Pick up independents in Portland and surrounding suburbs. In 2020, Gideon received 67 percent of the vote in Portland, a deep blue city that Farmer says she should have performed better in. He attributes that underperformance to Lisa Savage, who was running as an independent and picked up nearly 11 percent of the Portland vote. “Those Lisa Savage votes came straight off of Sarah Gideon,” Farmer said. “In a two-way race, [Jackson] has the opportunity to pick up thousands of votes just in Portland.” Jackson won the plurality of the Portland vote, 28 percent, in the gubernatorial election this June, a good sign for his prospects in the city.

3. Win over undecided female voters. Farmer suggests that independent female voters could be key to Jackson’s win. Collins was a pivotal vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Collins called the decision “ill-considered.” But Democrats are emphasizing Collins’s role in confirming a crucial vote in the 5–4 decision overturning Roe, hoping to pick up pro-choice female voters who otherwise might stay home.

“It’s always going to be tough. There’s a reason that she’s won for 30 years,” said Farmer about Collins. But Jackson still has a path to victory. If Democrats can harness the attention and energy around his nomination, and strategize carefully from here, the Maine Senate seat could still be in play.

- Emma Janssen

Would Dems pass a different version of the Massie amendment?

Democrats aren’t even close to finding a sustainable path forward on Israel, following a seismic House vote splitting the party down the middle on aid to the country. But all signs point to a sea change in how the party talks about the Middle East.

On July 15, representatives voted on the Massie amendment, which would cut $3.3 billion in unconditional aid to the country. The amendment failed, but in a major shock, 103 Democrats—even some who have previously received funding from pro-Israel organizations—voted for the amendment. Even Representative Thomas Massie, the Republican who brought the amendment and the sole “yes” vote in the GOP, was shocked by how many Democrats supported it. “I thought we might get 24, and 60 in my mind would have been a tremendous victory,” he told me on Thursday.

Democrats who voted for the amendment say they did so because there was no better way to express their dissatisfaction with Israel’s war in Gaza and actions during the war in Iran. “Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel is an ally. Israel does not have a right to buy F-35s on its ally’s credit card,” Representative Jake Auchincloss told me.

Auchincloss has been a beneficiary of funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and received $10,000 from the group during the 2025–26 cycle. After his “yes” vote, though, the option to donate to him disappeared from AIPAC’s website, along with the other Democrats the group supports who voted for the amendment.

Representative Sarah McBride is another typically pro-Israel Democrat who voted for the amendment. “It was a hard decision to come to,” she said. “The language was poorly written. The vehicle was deeply imperfect. But when the question is called, you have to decide: What is the message you want to send?”

Many of the 98 Democrats who voted “no” on the amendment emphasized that their vote wasn’t because they support the actions of the Israeli government. Representative Rosa DeLauro, for example, pointed to the amendment’s broad language as the reason that she couldn’t vote for it. “Its vague wording gives the Trump Administration broad leeway to determine which programs are defunded and how,” she wrote in a statement.

In her statement, DeLauro signaled that she wants to set stronger restrictions on Israel in the future. “We must ensure that any future security relationship with Israel is structured similarly to defense agreements with our Western and democratic allies,” she wrote. “A new defense agreement must be based on respect for human rights and allow for a route to Palestinian sovereignty.”

Auchincloss also has a vision for future legislation on Israel: “It needs to provide for Israel’s qualitative military edge,” he said. “But it also needs to represent the profound concerns of the American public about further conflict in the Middle East.”

I asked him if there’s a middle way forward for Democrats on Israel, and whether the party would be able to coalesce on a policy toward the country. “Is there a middle way? There needs to be, both in terms of individual policies that point Congress in that direction, and also as we start to architect the next memorandum of understanding,” he said, referencing the Obama administration’s agreement that guaranteed Israel $38 billion in military aid between 2019 and 2028.

Even though Democrats haven’t come to any concrete solutions to their Israel problem, the votes on the amendment signal that a shift is coming. “Number one: Public opinion is changing. Number two: It’s being reflected here in Washington, D.C. And number three: AIPAC’s grip, at least on one party, has been severely diminished,” Massie said of the vote.

- Emma Janssen

Outside Washington

Warren enters the fray in Michigan

There are just two weeks to go until Michigan’s August 4 primary, and the big battle between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and moderate Representative Haley Stevens over who gets to replace retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters shows zero signs of calming down. Monday morning, Senator Elizabeth Warren became the latest sitting progressive to back El-Sayed, despite Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer having endorsed Stevens.

“Michiganders deserve a senator who will fight for you, not for special interests running millions of dollars in TV ads to buy this seat,” Warren said in a subtextually spicy video posted to X. Warren also touted El-Sayed’s union credentials, and insisted that El-Sayed was the “only candidate in this race who can build the grassroots movement needed to win in November”—a not very thinly veiled rebuttal of establishment Democrats’ view that El-Sayed is too far left to defeat a Republican in the general election. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are also backing El-Sayed and appeared at a rally with him in Lansing on Sunday.

The context for that line about special interests: Pro-Stevens TV ad buys have outpaced pro-El-Sayed ad buys by a 12-to-one margin, The Detroit News’s Craig Mauger reported last week. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its affiliates alone have dropped almost $30 million. (Stevens recently voted against a proposal to cut off military aid to Israel.) But also, “a group called A Stronger Michigan, which hasn’t reported its donors’ names to the Federal Election Commission, has spent $12.1 million in support of Stevens,” Mauger wrote. The Detroit Free Press’s Todd Spangler, who calculated the spending ratio as more like 13 to one, noted that both A Stronger Michigan and Center Forward “have been linked to Jefferies Murray, a corporate lobbyist in Washington whose firm has represented defense contractor Northrop Grumman and Facebook parent Meta, among others.”

Last week, El-Sayed took to social media to ask his supporters to stop taking potshots at Stevens over things like her speaking voice, and instead “focus on the issues,” like the “corporations and special interests” who “support her.” Warren’s video would seem to fit the bill. It also hits many of the same notes AOC and Sanders hit over the weekend.

So who’s ahead? Recent polls are oddly split on the question. A Detroit News poll last week had Stevens up seven points. Then Data for Progress found El-Sayed up 13 points. On Monday, Tulchin Research released another poll finding El-Sayed up 16. And they were all in the field at more or less the same time. Obviously, they’re making pretty different guesses about who the electorate is going to be.

Elsewhere:

Gas prices are up above $4 again due to renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran. Last week’s optimistic reads on consumer spending—and thus the economy in general—after gas prices fell in June sure didn’t last long. 

Analysis from CalMatters’ Digital Democracy project finds that current members of the California legislature have, on average, only broken from their party majority 1 percent of the time. But some are more open to bucking the party line than others. Republican Greg Wallis, representing the swingy 47th district, has strayed in 8 percent of his votes. Democrat Jasmeet Bains—who ran for Congress this year but lost the June “top-two” primary to progressive Randy Villegas and Republican incumbent David Valadao—defected “just under 2 percent of the time since she was elected to the Legislature in 2022.” 

South Carolina Republicans continue to hurl their hats into the ring for the August 11 primary to replace late Senator Lindsey Graham. On Monday, Graham’s sister Darline Graham Nordone (backed by Trump) and Representative Russell Fry joined a field that already includes Representative Ralph Norman, businessman Mark Lynch, former Governor Mark Sanford, and lawyer Duke Buckner. Don’t forget that two sources have said former Representative Nancy Mace is “strongly considering” a “YOLO” run, too. Watch this (crowded) space to see who Democrat Annie Andrews will be facing in November.

- Heather Souvaine Horn

The Ideas Factory

A new poll from Data for Progress and the Center for Climate Integrity finds that voters “strongly support legal action to hold oil and gas corporations accountable for misleading them about the harms of natural gas, whether in the context of climate change or public health.” 

July 21 is Equal Pay Day for Black women—the day marking the extra days in 2026 that a Black woman would have to work in addition to all of 2025 to earn the same amount for the year as a white man. At the Century Foundation, Janelle Jones, Michelle Lavere, Michaela Minnis, Tiara Moultrie, and Lea Woods write about the various policies that might help close the gap. These include paid leave; “direct public investment” in childcare, both to lower costs and to “[raise] wages for early educators, 16.7 percent of whom are Black women”; reducing the cost of higher education; tracking Black employment in Fed data to “resist declaring full employment until Black workers experience it too”; and more.

Tuesday at 10 a.m., the Urban Institute hosts a hybrid event titled “Mobilizing Community and Economic Development to Address Climate Change: Paths for Transformative Action.” Speakers will include Jobs for the Future’s Madeleine Chaisson, Urban Institute’s Oriya Cohen, Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice’s Stuart Clarke, the Tucson, Arizona, city manager’s chief of staff Lane Mandle, and more.

Wednesday at 12:30 p.m., the Center for American Progress hosts an online conversation with Senator Chris Murphy entitled “Stopping Trump’s Crypto Corruption,” focusing on “why stronger oversight and anticorruption rules for cryptocurrency markets are essential to protecting U.S. national security and our democracy.”

- Heather Souvaine Horn

Four Questions For: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

Interviewed by Matt Ford

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?

A: I’m currently senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, where I’ve been for almost 10 years now. I started my career as an immigration lawyer, but these days, rather than explaining immigration law and policy to a single client, I spend my days explaining immigration law and policy to the general public, policymakers, and the media. Right now, with the imminent loss of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people, I’m diving into co-writing a new publication looking at the Trump administration’s broader “de-legalization” campaign, which is shaping up to be the largest in modern American history.  

Q: What is the most difficult thing about your line of work? 

A: The most difficult thing about tracking immigration law and policy is the sheer volume of changes, which keeps accelerating. Statements which are true on Monday may be false by Friday. Protections which lasted for generations can end in a heartbeat. If the first Trump administration was like running a marathon, the second one feels like trying to run a triathlon when the water’s covered in an oil slick, the bike has two flat tires, and every other competitor gets to take shortcuts.  

Q: What was your biggest success in the last year or two? 

A: It’s been a whirlwind couple of years. But the work I’m most proud of recently is our May publication “Restoring Credibility and Humanity to Immigration Enforcement: A New Framework for Interior Immigration Enforcement.” At a time when the need to make major changes to ICE has never been more clear, I think we offer a uniquely positive vision for fixing what is broken; one that offers high-level solutions, messaging, and concrete policy ideas that are usable for anyone looking to answer the question of what to do with ICE.  

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times? 

A: It’s a cliché, but spending time with friends and family has never been more important to me, and I’ve been prioritizing that whenever possible. Beyond the directly personal, I keep coming back to the community response we saw in Minneapolis; how people came together to respond to Trump’s shock and awe campaign leveled against an American city. That level of mutual aid and community support is a model for an American future that is not as atomized and divided as our social media feeds want us to feel, and reminds us that basic human decency and a love of our neighbors makes us far stronger than stigmatizing immigrants ever could.  

Political Trivia Question of the Day

This state didn’t elect its first Democratic senator until 1974. What’s the state, and for bonus points, who was the senator? Sign up for The Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter! ...