ALLAGASH, Maine — When the pandemic kept much of the world indoors, Troy Jackson came out of lockdown to officiate Ronnie Pelletier’s wedding. This fall, Pelletier plans to vote for Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

In Jackson’s hometown of 234 people, deep in the northern Maine wilderness, nearly everyone knows the Democrat challenging Collins for her Senate seat, and that familiarity cuts both ways.

To some of his neighbors, Jackson is the rare politician who is truly one of them. To others, like Pelletier, he’s a reliable neighbor who may not be ready for Washington.

Louie Pelletier (no relation to Ronnie) has known Jackson since grade school. Her sister has been Jackson’s partner for more than 40 years. She’s firmly in the first camp.

“Troy’s strong point has always been that he connects to everyday people,” she said. “We know he’s one of us.”

That sense of authenticity is at the heart of the case Jackson is making to the rest of Maine. For voters watching the price of groceries, housing, heat and electricity climb, the question this fall is a familiar one: Who can make life more affordable?

Collins, the five-term incumbent Republican and chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, has a record of bringing federal money home to the state. Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and former president of the state Senate, is comparatively unknown statewide. But he has spent his short campaign arguing that his greatest advantage is exactly what sets him apart from Collins: He’s a rough-around-the-edges Mainer who may lack a polished political persona but knows firsthand what it’s like to go days without heat or running water.

Jackson’s race was always going to be an uphill battle. After winning a special nominating convention to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee, he faced the daunting challenge of moving the party past Platner’s sexual assault allegations and building a statewide campaign in just 100 days.

Now, with less than a month until Election Day, he has a high-stakes opportunity to raise his profile and make his case in a series of four debates against Collins. November will test whether he has succeeded in introducing himself to voters across Maine — or whether Collins’ decades of name recognition prove too much to overcome.

Ronnie Pelletier has already seen Jackson on a debate stage, and he wasn’t impressed. The firefighter sees Jackson’s lack of polish as a liability and questions whether he’s ready for the Senate, pointing to Jackson’s performance in a February gubernatorial debate against Republican Bobby Charles. Jackson let his temper show, Ronnie Pelletier said, and he’s worried Jackson won’t be able to control it in the intense moments that come with being a senator.

“I watched it, and then I read all the comments, and it was not good,” Ronnie Pelletier told MS NOW. “You looked at Troy’s attitude, and it’s like he was insulted to be there. He got pissed. He either does not do well under pressure or he does not get along with others.”

He also sees Jackson’s path to the nomination as a weakness, noting that Jackson became the Senate candidate only after losing the Democratic primary for governor. Ronnie Pelletier said he voted for Jackson when he ran for the state Legislature, but the U.S. Senate is “too much power” for the Democrat.

“He’s going from a small pond into the big ocean, and it’s not going to end well,” he said.

Hilton Hafford sees it differently. Hafford, also grew up with Jackson and joined him in the 1998 logging blockade that pushed Jackson into politics. He isn’t sold on what’s generally regarded as Collins’ greatest strength. Securing federal money is part of the job, he said.

“Granted, she has brought a lot of money back into Maine and has done a lot for the county and Maine,” Hafford said. “But I don’t think it’s anything that anybody else in that position wouldn’t have done.”

Hafford, who participated alongside him in the 1998 logging blockade protest that pushed Jackson into politics, also challenged Collins’ argument that she is a moderate who’s willing to stand up to President Donald Trump.

“She’s played this middle-of-the-road card for so many years but she only votes that way when it doesn’t matter,” Hafford said.

Collins voted with Trump roughly 95% of the time in 2025, according to Roll Call — the third-lowest rate among Senate Republicans. This Congress, Collins voted against Trump’s landmark H.R. 1 bill, more widely known as the “one big, beautiful bill,” and voted to curb his military actions against Iran. But Democrats have pointed out that Collins initially opposed forcing the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files last fall, and that during Trump’s first term, she voted to confirm Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, both of whom later voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“When her vote doesn’t count, she’ll cross the aisle,” Hafford said. “But people are getting smart and coming onto it.”

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