This opinion piece is part of an ongoing debate in Maine DSA about candidates in 2026. Pine and Roses welcomes contributions.
“[O]ur notion, from the very beginning, was that ‘the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself[.]’” — Friedrich Engels, 1888 Preface to the Communist Manifesto
Troy Jackson is a man that needs very little introduction within the labor movement in Maine. Troy has spent nearly half of his life in public service, having been first elected to the Maine State House of Representatives in 2002, and the State Senate in 2008, where he eventually became Senate President in 2018. During his entire time in public office, Troy has earned a reputation as a stalwart ally to Maine’s working class.
When I first heard about Troy, I was quite dismissive. I quietly entered the labor movement with a lengthy article on the need for an independent working class party, so when I heard some of my comrades gushing about Troy as the latest reform candidate running on the ticket of a bourgeois party, I assumed that they were describing a certain kind of political candidate and electoral strategy which I had already thoroughly criticized. My position changed, however, when I had the opportunity of hearing Troy speak at the Maine AFL-CIO’s summer institute, and I saw that Troy was actually something completely different from what his supporters had described to me.
What makes Troy Jackson’s gubernatorial campaign qualitatively different from those of other reform candidates is this: unlike other mainstream reform candidates like Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, and Graham Platner, all of whom demand systemic reforms which would benefit the working class while leaving intact the system that dominates the working class, Troy’s campaign is actually demanding worker control over the levers of political power, albeit still within the bounds of the existing political system. In doing so, Troy has actually fused the economic side of the struggle for working class emancipation with its political counterpart, as opposed to “lending the economic struggle a political character” (Cosmonaut Magazine). In this regard, Troy stands leagues above every mainstream reform candidate in my opinion, even above Sanders, who Troy names as one of his personal influences. It is for this reason that I think Troy is worthy of endorsement by all self-described socialist and/or communist organizations.
Now Troy is very much not a Marxist, nor any other kind of socialist or communist, nor does Troy pretend to be any of these things. He therefore does not articulate his demand for working class political power in the same terms that my comrades and I would use. It is apparent in his speeches that Troy is driven by lived experience and intuition rather than a scientific critique of the status quo. Any excerpt I present from Troy’s speeches could therefore never make my entire argument for me, as they demand to be viewed in their full context. Nevertheless, I find the following excerpts from his speech at Bernie Sanders’ Labor Day rally in Portland to be highly illustrative, as they punctuate the end of a speech where Troy talks about the lessons he learned as a fifth-generation logger about the importance of the working class taking collective action to advance its own interests:
“I’m running because it’s time to put power back in the hands of people[…] We know that the only way to build our future, the future we want, is if we build it ourselves! That’s why this campaign isn’t just about sending me to the Blaine House, it’s about sending each and every one of you coming along with me, to restore our dignity, and fix what’s been broken for too damn long![…] It’s about time for real folks to take the wheel! Hell, we built the wheel!”
There are many socialists, however, who will acknowledge that while there is clearly a lot to like about Troy, the fact that he is not running on the ticket of an independent working class party disqualifies him from some, if not all, forms of support. While this is very close to my own general position towards socialist electoral participation, and I agree on the concrete need to establish an independent working class party which fields its own candidates in elections, the path to get there must be developed according to the time and place in which we find ourselves. Supporting a position with a strong argument is not enough to bring about change in the world—oh what a different place the world would be if that were the case!
Those who argue a priori for an independent working class party, while correct about the concrete necessity of such a party, forget that such a party has no social basis so long as the working class has not realized the impossibility of consistently advancing its interests in parties consisting of both bosses and workers, such as the Democratic Party (Cosmonaut Magazine).
Here in Maine, the most advanced section of the working class, represented by Troy and the labor unions, are currently tied very closely to the Democratic Party. I know this quite well because I have conversed with numerous Democratic Party activists at the Maine AFL-CIO events which I have attended. The same phenomenon becomes apparent at the national level when looking at national political fundraising data available on OpenSecrets. It’s an arrangement which, owing to favorable conditions, has worked well for the Maine AFL-CIO, as it has successfully gotten numerous union members elected to seats in the state legislature on the Democratic Party ticket.
The organized and disorganized sections of the working class cannot be won over with argument alone, but must arrive at our conclusion themselves. Socialists need to aid this development by engaging in struggle and agitation alongside the workers and their representatives in the unions. To argue otherwise is to essentially insist that the working class must come to us socialists for our support. Those who commit this error forget these salient words from the Communist Manifesto:
“In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.” — Communist Manifesto section 2
This is where Troy and his campaign once again enter the picture, as his campaign has already become a scene for class struggle in the political arena.
Though it is not always the deciding factor in elections, the candidate whose campaign succeeds in raising the most money generally stands a very good chance at winning their election. And since the capitalist class has the most money, the fundraising data disclosed by political candidates serves as an indicator of which candidates are preferred by the capitalist class (Cosmonaut Magazine).
At the time of writing, the available fundraising data for the most prominent candidates in the gubernatorial race is as follows: 1) Hannah Pingree (Dem.): $542,000; 2) Shenna Bellows (Dem.): $529,000; 3) Angus King III (Dem.): $434,000; 4) Troy Jackson (Dem.): $400,000; 5) Robert Charles (Rep.): $257,000; 6) Richard Bennett (Ind.): $202,000 (Maine Ethics Commission).
Were it not for small donations raised through his connections to Maine’s working class institutions, Troy would not even be on this list. It is quite telling that despite having spent the most time in office and having the most endorsements of anyone currently running on the Democratic ticket, Troy is currently being out-fundraised by someone as formidably unimpressive as Angus King III—son of former Maine Governor and sitting US Senator Angus King. The fact that Troy ranks fourth in fundraising despite being the strongest candidate clearly indicates that the capitalist class will only tolerate working people in government so long as they remain subordinate to a non-working class executive, mirroring the condition of working people in the economy more generally. Troy’s considerable resumé is irrelevant to the capitalist class. They don’t care that Troy has been a faithful Democrat for over 20 years. They don’t care that Troy is probably the candidate who is most representative of the average Mainer. They would rather have a vegetable like Angus King III in the Blaine House—leave it to the guy with the surname King to campaign on nothing other than birthright!
What excites me about Troy’s campaign is precisely what Maine’s capitalist class disdains most about Troy’s campaign: Troy Represents the conscious self-activity of the working class advancing its own interests in the political arena. I do not expect miracles from Troy if he is elected. For me, Troy has already performed his most important miracle by making his campaign a demand for direct working class political power. I know Troy isn’t the socialist movement’s ideal candidate, but he doesn’t need to be in this case. If Troy becomes Governor, Maine’s working class gets the opportunity to witness the limitations of advancing its own interests within a bourgeois government; that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for [their] own purposes” (The Civil War in France). If Troy loses in the party primaries, then it will demonstrate to Maine’s working class the problems of trying to advance working class interests in a party consisting of workers and owners—something already hinted at by the fundraising data shown above. Hence my frequent refrain when comrades ask me what I think of Troy: Maine’s working class takes a step forward whether he wins or loses. And as Marx would say: “[e]very step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs” (Letter to Bracke).
