Troy Jack­son emerges as front-run­ner for Maine Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate nom­i­na­tion

For­mer Maine state Sen. Troy Jack­son emerged as the front-run­ner for the Maine Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate nom­i­na­tion on Sun­day after secur­ing the back­ing of a major­i­ty of state del­e­gates ahead of next weekend’s state con­ven­tion. His two main oppo­nents, Maine Sec­re­tary of State Shen­na Bel­lows and for­mer pub­lic health offi­cial Nirav Shah, both end­ed their cam­paigns on Sun­day, fur­ther solid­i­fy­ing Jackson’s sta­tus as the like­ly nominee.“While they are not legal­ly bound to sup­port him, near­ly two-thirds of the 601 del­e­gates have com­mit­ted to vot­ing for Jack­son at the statewide con­ven­tion,” Politi­co report­ed on Sun­day after­noon. Bel­lows announced her exit from the race just min­utes before vot­ing began ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, say­ing, “The most impor­tant thing we can do in this moment is to unite to defeat Susan Collins.”“Donald Trump’s attacks on our democ­ra­cy are only accel­er­at­ing,” the state­ment said, “and the best way I can serve our state and coun­try at this moment is by focus­ing exclu­sive­ly on my role as Sec­re­tary of State. This has been an unprece­dent­ed nom­i­nat­ing process, com­pressed into days instead of months, and I’m grate­ful to every vol­un­teer who worked around the clock for t …