Diners eat classic American fare at Two Rivers Lunch, the only restaurant in Allagash, on Sunday. (Ethan Wolin/Staff Writer)

ALLAGASH — Troy Jackson’s fellow residents in this tiny town near the tippity top of Maine were deeply divided about his U.S. Senate campaign on the day after he accepted the Democratic nomination.

Jackson has made his roots as a logger from Allagash, population 237 in the last census, core to the working-class brand that Democrats hope can help him topple longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins this November. He was thrown into the critical Senate race this month after the abrupt withdrawal of the previous nominee, Graham Platner.

But Allagash, an Aroostook County town where a handful of surnames predominate and paddlers from the Allagash Wilderness Waterway wind up, showed few signs of rallying behind its native son and longtime former state legislator on Sunday. While some locals recited his claim to stand for neither the right nor the left, but rather the “bottom” ascending, others rejected its premise, calling Jackson too liberal and out of step with their values.

Darlene Dumond, a Democrat who owns the only restaurant in town, which was packed for Sunday lunch, said Jackson’s standing at home has suffered from growing partisanship in the era of President Donald Trump. Trump has won more votes in Allagash than each of his Democratic opponents, by margins of at least 10 percentage points — and over 20 points in 2024. Jackson was first elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 2002.

“I think Troy just, to them, got a little too big for his britches,” Dumond, 67, said of Jackson’s hometown critics. She holds out hope for newfound unity if he wins in November: “They’re going to jump on the wagon.”

Jackson still got more Allagash votes than Trump or Collins did in 2020, when all three appeared on the ballot. Jackson was seeking reelection to the state Senate he then led.

But three years later, nearing a term limit, he fell short in a close local election to lead Allagash as its first selectman. He lost that race to Karie Kelly, who said in an interview that the role was mainly administrative.

Behind the counter at a convenience store in neighboring Saint Francis on Sunday, Kelly said she had not sought the office with the goal of challenging one of Maine’s top leaders at the time. But it grew so divisive, she said, that she lost friends in the process and stepped down after a year and a half due to flak from Jackson’s supporters.

“He’s all about himself,” said Kelly, a 53-year-old Republican, suggesting that Jackson played up his past work as a logger, whereas her husband was about to leave for a week in the woods.

BJ McCollister, an adviser to Jackson, said in a statement that Jackson “spent his career fighting for rural communities, taking on big corporations, and standing up for the little guy. Mainers trust Troy.” Jackson began working as a logger from a young age with his father.

Watering her plants across the road from the Saint John River, Colleen McBreairty, a retired teacher, had just returned to Allagash the night before. She had been one of hundreds of delegates to pick Jackson at Saturday’s Democratic convention in Bangor — and she’s his mother.

“It was overwhelming,” she said in an interview on her screened porch. “I never realized how big it was until yesterday morning.” Since getting home, she had seen her first attack ad about her son in the fusillade from Collins and her allies beginning to target him.

McBreairty, 74, said she had stopped looking at Facebook comments from people in Allagash criticizing Jackson. She got a different reception at a post-convention celebration with Jackson’s backers from around the state.

Colleen McBreairty, Troy Jackson’s mother, sits on her porch in Allagash the day after he won the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination at a convention where she was a delegate. (Ethan Wolin/Staff Writer)

“It was nice to be surrounded by people that were so positive. It really was,” she said.

She did not see Jackson’s turn as a Senate nominee coming. Not a few weeks ago, when he went fishing nearby after placing third in the Democratic governor’s primary, and not when he was a child.

“He came into this world with two teenage parents, a little young man from Allagash, you know. I never would’ve expected he would ever have the chance to be at this level,” she said.

In Allagash, a question appeared to loom over disparate views of Jackson’s latest campaign: Has he changed?

His mother insisted, unprompted, that “he’s the same Troy.” Her friend Sandra Hafford, an 82-year-old retired teacher sitting at the Allagash Historical Society Museum down the street, agreed.

“He cares about people and he listens to them,” she said. “He would help even the people that don’t support him if they needed help.”

A photo of the Two Rivers Lunch restaurant in Allagash. The restaurant’s name refers to the convergence of the Allagash River and the Saint John River, which becomes the U.S.-Canadian border a dozen miles north. (Ethan Wolin/Staff Writer)

Dumond’s restaurant, Two Rivers Lunch, which her parents founded a half-century ago, is named for the convergence of the Allagash River from the south and the Saint John River that becomes the border with Canada a dozen miles north. Inside the restaurant, streams of thought about Jackson were less confluent, though plenty cordial between one couple.

“I feel he changed a lot to go far left to try to appease the people down south, where the votes are,” said David Albert, a 63-year-old Navy veteran and retired U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who worked at the Fort Kent border crossing a half-hour’s drive away.

Jackson once ran for office as a Republican and has shifted left on issues including abortion. Albert, a Republican, pointed to the candidate’s recent calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He and his wife, Tammy Albert, a Democrat, live in Fort Kent and drove to Allagash on Sunday to tend to their camp there with a small house. She knew Jackson while growing up and appreciated his work at the State House championing legislation related to her job at the Hope & Justice Project, an Aroostook County organization focused on domestic violence.

“It’s a great thing for our area to have somebody come from our area and, you know, kind of campaign for us too, being up north, as much as he can,” Tammy Albert, 59, said.

With less than 100 days until the November election, Jackson’s mother knows that campaigning will keep him from Allagash. She saw saw him regularly during the yearlong gubernatorial campaign, hosting him for Sunday dinners when he was in town, McBreairty said, but this race will be different.

“Until this is over with, I don’t expect to see much of him,” she said. “I think that he’s going to be focused on this, which is, you know — which is fine for me.”