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By Irie Sentner and Ali Bianco |
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With help from Eli Okun Good Sunday morning, and happy 100 days until Election Day to all who celebrate. This is Irie Sentner and Ali Bianco. Irie’s on return from Bangor and still salivating at yesterday’s post-convention lobster roll. Do you prefer traditional or Connecticut style? Get in touch.
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DRIVING THE DAY |
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BANGOR, Maine — Republicans had months to research and rebuke Graham Platner. They now have exactly 100 days to sink his replacement. Troy Jackson is like Platner but worse. He’s a socialist who’s flip-flopped on policy, a career politician who keeps losing, an insider who is also unknown. His nomination was illegitimate, he has anger issues, and he lacks “rizz.” That’s just a sampling of the messaging the GOP plans to use to trounce Jackson, the former Maine Senate president who lost this year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary only to glide this weekend into the party’s nomination to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in November. “Mainers already rejected Troy Jackson once this year after his failed campaign for governor. Now Democrats are asking voters to believe the politician they didn’t want leading Augusta belongs in the United States Senate,” the NRSC, Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, wrote in a “messaging guidance” document about Jackson, viewed by Playbook. “Jackson is a radical, ill-tempered career politician whose failed record and socialist agenda make him unfit to represent Maine.” The stakes are high. Collins is the only Republican senator running for re-election this cycle in a state Kamala Harris won in 2024, and Democrats’ hopes of retaking the chamber track straight through Maine — a reality the NRSC admitted is possible in its new donor memo, shared first with Playbook, acknowledging that “Jackson is fully capable of winning this seat if we become complacent.” Republicans’ first plan of attack is to link Jackson to Platner, with whom he campaigned and shares much of his populist platform. As soon as Jackson’s nomination became official yesterday, the Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s super PAC, announced that it was launching a six-figure ad blitz that begins by depicting the two Democrats hugging on stage. “Jackson is like Graham Platner but worse,” the ad says, citing reporting from WaPo, CNN and other outlets about Jackson’s alleged sharp temper and heated interactions with colleagues. The NRSC yesterday posted a video on X depicting Platner literally transforming into Jackson — with the caption “No tattoo, same crazy,” a reference to Platner’s tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol. “Troy Jackson is all the baggage without the ‘rizz,” James Blair, who leads President Donald Trump’s outside political operation, said on X. Jackson campaigned alongside Platner and stood by him through several scandals — until POLITICO reported earlier this month that a woman who dated Platner said he had sexually assaulted her, a claim Platner denies. In response, Jackson publicly disavowed Platner and said he had “lied to me.” Jackson told reporters yesterday he has not spoken to Platner since then. Asked to respond to SLF’s ad, Jackson said “anyone that I may have argued with, that I might have went too far or got too passionate, I apologize to.”
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A message from Anthropic: Helping a Boston restaurant owner support his team
Running a restaurant means financial pressure and moving parts. At Shy Bird, owner Eli Feldman uses Claude to help solve problems from kitchen organization to manager coaching, so he can give more to the people who make the restaurant run. Learn more. |
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The GOP’s second push is to brand Jackson as a “political insider” — a bid to undermine his populist bonafides at a time when voters from neither party trust establishment politicians. “We must act immediately to define him before national Democrats frame him as a populist outsider,” the NRSC memo said. “Chuck Schumer forcefully removed Graham Platner from the ballot against the will of Maine voters, only to replace him with a deranged and scandal-plagued political insider,” SLF Communications Director Chris Gustafson said in a statement to Playbook. Part of that strategy is to not only label Jackson as a longserving member of the establishment (Collins, for what it’s worth, has held her seat for nearly three decades), but as a political insider who has failed when seeking higher office. As state Senate president, Jackson was the second-highest ranking official in Maine — but he ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Congress in 2014 and for governor earlier this year, a fresh wound Republicans are eager to pick at. Compounding that insider image is the way Maine Democrats selected Jackson: While more than 200,000 Mainers voted for Platner in the primary, just 566 Democratic delegates actively chose Jackson at yesterday’s nominating convention — a fact Republicans hope to spin into a narrative that Jackson was coronated by party insiders. “Not one single vote was cast for Troy Jackson” in the Senate race, RNC Chair Joe Gruters said on X. “Just one month ago, Troy came in third in the Democratic primary for Governor. Now he will run for Senate as the third choice of his party insiders,” Collins campaign spokesperson Shawn Roderick said in a statement to Playbook. He added, “in a process concocted by the Maine Democratic Party establishment, a 24-year Augusta insider was appointed to run for the Senate by fewer than three-tenths of one percent of its primary voters.” Jackson, for his part, appears committed to maintaining his image as a populist who, as has become his campaign motto, comes neither from the left nor the right, but “from the bottom.” He’s more eager to bring up being a fifth-generation logger than his decades of experience in state politics — and at any mention of his relationship to Platner, he’s quick to pivot to his role as part of a broader pro-worker movement. And his campaign is staying laser-focused on attacking Collins, POLITICO’s Andrew Howard reports. “Only Susan Collins could spend nearly 30 years in Washington voting with Donald Trump 96 percent of the time and taking millions from corporate special interests, then call a fifth-generation logger from Allagash a ‘party insider,’” Jackson campaign adviser BJ McCollister said in a statement to Playbook. “Mainers know who Troy Jackson is—and they know exactly who Susan Collins works for.” Asked yesterday to respond to the GOP messaging shortly after clinching the official nomination, Jackson told reporters that he attributes Republicans’ attacks to “Senator Collins trying to make sure that she can win re-election on a really bad record.” “I've been in the legislature for 20 years,” he added. “I do believe I've been vetted. I've been tested. People know exactly what I'm fighting for. They know that I've had their back, and they know they can trust me.” Andrew Howard contributed to this report.
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A message from Anthropic:  
Helping a Boston restaurant owner support his team
Running a restaurant comes with pressure. At Shy Bird, Claude helps Eli Feldman do more for his team. Learn more. |
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SUNDAY BEST … — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Trump’s executive order to put up signs at Smithsonian National Museum of American History warning visitors of “inaccurate information,” on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “We're going to explore every legislative avenue and every litigation avenue, as we've repeatedly done up until this point. Here's the thing. Black history is American history, and we are not going to let the extremists whitewash it, not now, not ever." — Border czar Tom Homan on abuse allegations from two ex-wives against the ICE agent who fatally shot a man in Maine, on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “If those are facts, I don’t think he should have ever cleared vetting. … How did the vetting process fail? Was that information not available? Did they not know?” More from POLITICO’s Cheyanne M. Daniels — U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz on whether Trump is ruling out additional strikes in Iran, on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “I wouldn't go that far at all. The president is keeping all options on the table. I've spoken with the negotiators. … What the president is doing right now, as we've seen all along, is giving the talks some space.”
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A message from Anthropic:  
How a Boston restaurant owner uses Claude to help support his team |
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6 THINGS FOR YOUR RADAR 1. WAR REPORT: Trump is holding off on plans to potentially sharply escalate the war in Iran amid concerns that such a move could further deplete the Pentagon’s already diminished supply of munitions, NYT’s Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan report. “The latest turn in Mr. Trump’s handling of the conflict with Iran came after a meeting on Friday with top advisers and senior members of his cabinet, according to two people briefed on the discussion,” they write. 2. DEM MIDTERM MESSAGE LOADING: Jeffries teased that House Democrats are launching a new affordability-centric “effort” today to mark 100 days to the midterm elections, POLITICO’s Riley Rogerson writes in. Before his chamber took off for August recess, Jeffries said Democrats will make clear they are “focused on lowering the cost of groceries and gas and housing,” “committed to a country that provides affordable health care for every American,” and planning to “hold the crooks accountable who've been robbing the American people blind.” Jeffries is jumpstarting that messaging this afternoon, when he’s set to speak in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to kick-off 100 days to the midterms alongside Gov. Josh Shapiro and House Democratic candidate Bob Brooks, a firefighter union leader who is challenging GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in the seventh district. “MAGA Republicans can find money for Donald Trump’s reckless war of choice in Iran,” Jeffries is planning to say, according to an excerpt shared with Riley. “They can find money for his king-like ballroom. They can find money to unleash ICE brutality on American citizens and law-abiding immigrant families. But when it comes to making your life more affordable, the cookie jar is empty.” 3. I’M JUST KEN: The DNC is so broke that it has begun asking vendors not to send bills until after the midterms — and Chair Ken Martin is so stressed that he threw a phone at a junior aide’s desk, NYT’s Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein report. In a statement to the Times, DNC Executive Director Roger Lau said the bill-deferral discussions were “nothing more than standard negotiations with vendors over contracts and payment processes.” Facing a massive financial disadvantage heading into 2026 (the DNC is $2 million in debt, compared to the nearly $130 million surplus the RNC’s enjoying), Martin met this month with Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to propose a new mega committee to raise campaign cash, NYT reports. At least some involved in the meeting “saw the move as a bid to inflate the fund-raising figures of Mr. Martin’s struggling committee — and to take credit for cash transfers he could not otherwise afford,” per the Times. But “Mr. Martin offered to do whatever was helpful, though the group left without an agreement.”
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A message from Anthropic: Helping a Boston restaurant owner support his team
Running a restaurant means financial pressure and moving parts. At Shy Bird, owner Eli Feldman uses Claude to help solve problems from kitchen organization to manager coaching, so he can give more to the people who make the restaurant run. Learn more. |
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4. BIG TECH ENERGY: “Big Tech’s Money Men Don’t Care About the Backlash,” by POLITICO’s Calder McHugh: “[Zac] Moffatt and [Josh] Vlasto are little known to the public, but they’re familiar figures in Washington and the world of political campaigns. They have decades of experience on the political battlefield and bring bipartisan bona fides; Moffatt’s a Republican, Vlasto’s a Democrat. And they’re now guiding one of the biggest pots of money flowing into the midterms.” 5. FLORIDA MAN: The Sunshine State’s congressional delegation could undergo a massive transformation during the Aug. 18 primaries, with redistricting and lawmaker departures potentially handing the GOP up to eight new members — and Trump has unparalleled power to determine who those people are, POLITICO’s Gary Fineout reports from Tallahassee: “A member of the president’s political operation, granted anonymity as they were not authorized to talk publicly about Trump endorsements, said the president could ‘weigh into some’ of the Florida races but did not give any specifics on timing.” 6. UP IN YOUR BUSINESS: “Abortion opponents have a new weapon in their fight for pill bans: wastewater data,” by POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein and Ariel Wittenberg: “The group Students for Life of America spent the last two years collecting and analyzing water samples in different American cities, searching for evidence to support their claim that women having at-home abortions using the drugs and flushing fetal remains poses a threat to the environment. That work culminated in the release this week of a controversial study purporting to show ‘significant levels of mifepristone’ contaminating the waterways of Austin, Texas; Blacksburg, Virginia; and Carbondale, Illinois.”
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TALK OF THE TOWN |
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CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY — “Hawaii Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke indicted on bribery charges,” by POLITICO’s Gregory Svirnovskiy and Ben Johansen: “The charges stem from a monthslong investigation by the Hawaii attorney general’s office into allegations the lieutenant governor accepted campaign contributions from businessperson and lobbyist Tobi Solidum in exchange for helping advance a Covid-19 testing contract while she served as chair of the state House Finance Committee in 2022. … Luke’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and she does not appear to have entered a plea as of Saturday evening. … Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told POLITICO on Saturday he believes Luke should resign.” ARCH TRIUMPH — The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation is moving forward with an attempt to change the rules that govern changes to landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places, WaPo’s Dan Diamond and Jake Spring report. “If codified into law, the new rules would make it easier for President Donald Trump to pursue his controversial construction projects — such as building his planned triumphal arch — and could eliminate the need for public input on other major federal projects,” they say. BIDENWATCH — “The shrinking world of former president Joe Biden,” by WaPo’s Cleve R. Wootson Jr.: “Eighteen months after leaving the White House, the 83-year-old former president moves within a narrowed circle of relatives, old friends and longtime aides as he undergoes treatment for metastatic cancer.” HAPPY BIRTHDAY: DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin … Center for American Progress’ Patrick Gaspard … Maura Corbett of Glen Echo Group and Orchestra … Erin Gloria Ryan … Bill Raines … Nick Muzin of Stonington Global … Andrew Romeo … U.S. Ambassador to Mongolia Richard Buangan … Allison Dong of House Budget … Emily Kane … Julie Anbender … Scott Sforza of Scott Sforza & Associates … former Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.) … Jonathan Davidson … Lara Costello … Ashley Allison … Joe Jackson of Sen. Cynthia Lummis’ (R-Wyo.) office … Mike McConnell … Sonny Bunch … David Mayorga … Oscar Goodman … POLITICO’s Aayush Prasad … Andrew Gillum … Jacinda Ardern … RNC’s Benjamin Sumner Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Giuseppe Macri and deputy editor Garrett Ross.
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