缅因州参议院候选人特洛伊·杰克逊及其民主党同僚们希望最终能够击败共和党参议员苏珊·柯林斯。他们将重点放在柯林斯的投票行为上——她曾投票支持布雷特·卡瓦诺的任命，而卡瓦诺后来成为了最高法院多数派的成员。
Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson and fellow Democrats are hoping to finally oust GOP Sen. Susan Collins by focusing on her decisive vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, a justice who joined the majority in the decision.
在最高法院的裁决改变了2022年中期选举的结果四年后，生殖权利问题再次成为缅因州竞选活动的核心议题。杰克逊希望能够在自己所在的选区（包括波特兰及其南部郊区）取得胜利，这些地区的选民中政治立场较为温和的女性选民占很大比例。
Four years after the Supreme Court’s overturning of shook the 2022 midterms, reproductive rights have reemerged as a central campaign issue in Maine, where Jackson aims to prevail where his party fell short six years ago. He has made the issue a core component of his pitch to voters in areas like Portland and its southern suburbs that include a healthy composition of politically moderate female voters.
“就在最近，柯林斯还表示她对自己的投票决定并不后悔，但这对我来说完全无法理解——因为我和这个州里的每一个人都对此感到非常遗憾，”杰克逊在本周于波特兰郊区斯卡伯勒举行的市政厅会议上说道。
“The fact that, just recently, [Collins] said that she doesn’t regret her vote on Kavanaugh says everything to me because I sure as hell do, and everybody else in this state and everybody else in this country does,” Jackson said at a town hall this week in the Portland suburb Scarborough.
然而，杰克逊在试图将生殖权利问题作为今年秋季竞选的核心议题时面临诸多阻力。此外，他还缺乏强有力的支持者——缅因州最有权势的民主党女性官员珍妮特·米尔斯并未公开支持杰克逊。杰克逊与米尔斯之间的关系一直非常紧张，他在竞选州长时也曾坦承这一点。
But Jackson faces some headwinds in his attempts to sell reproductive rights as a core issue this fall. And he lacks potential ammunition in the form of Gov. Janet Mills, the most powerful female Democrat in Maine — who has not endorsed the Democratic nominee. Jackson and Mills have a notoriously icy history, something Jackson was candid about during his run for governor.
“我们之间的分歧确实很多，这并不是秘密，”杰克逊在4月份表示，“米尔斯州长否决了我的40多项法案。”米尔斯的发言人本·古德曼在一份声明中表示：“自杰克逊成为民主党参议院候选人以来，他从未主动联系过米尔斯州长寻求支持。米尔斯州长认为民主党必须重新夺回参议院的多数席位，并勇敢对抗特朗普总统；她愿意与杰克逊进行对话。”杰克逊的发言人则拒绝对此发表评论。
“We obviously disagreed a lot — it’s no secret,” he said in April. “I mean, the governor vetoed more than 40 of my bills.” A spokesman for Mills said Jackson hasn’t sought her support. “Since becoming the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, Mr. Jackson has not reached out to the Governor to seek her support,” the spokesman, Ben Goodman, said in a statement. “The Governor believes it’s crucial that Democrats retake the U.S. Senate majority and stand up to President Trump, and she would welcome a conversation with Mr. Jackson.” A Jackson spokesperson declined to comment.
虽然杰克逊协助推动了一项保护堕胎权的法案，该法案于2023年由米尔斯签署成为法律，但他在职业生涯早期曾反对堕胎权。他在今年早些时候参加民主党州长初选时，他之前在这个问题上的立场被用来攻击他。
And while Jackson helped advance a bill to protect abortion rights that Mills signed into law in 2023, he opposed abortion rights early in his career. His previous position on this issue was used against him when he ran in the Democratic primary for governor earlier this year.
杰克逊将他的转变描述为一个在缅因州农村深度保守地区长大的人真正的心意转变。
Jackson has framed his evolution as a genuine change of heart from someone who grew up in a deeply conservative part of rural Maine.
“我在一个非常强烈的法裔天主教地区长大，你知道，一直在这方面感到矛盾，”他在四月的《松树州政治》播客节目中说。
Jackson has framed his evolution as a genuine change of heart from someone who grew up in a deeply conservative part of rural Maine. “I grew up in a very strong French Catholic area, you know, conflicted on that all the time,” he said on the Pine State Politics podcast in April.
但他说：“我和许多有过那些经历的人交谈过，这让我意识到……生殖权利就是医疗保健，这最终让我明白过来了，我开始理解这一点。”计划生育行动组织（一个堕胎权倡导团体）本月早些时候背书支持杰克逊。该组织主席米尼·蒂马拉朱八月在布伦瑞克一个后院举行的“女性支持特罗伊”活动中与候选人同台亮相。
But, he said, “I talked to many people who, you know, had those stories, and it just came to me that … reproductive access is healthcare, and that really came to me eventually, and I started to understand that.” Planned Parenthood Action, an abortion rights advocacy group, endorsed Jackson earlier this month. Mini Timmaraju, the group’s president appeared with the candidate at a “Women for Troy” event in a backyard in Brunswick in August.
在该活动上，她大力宣扬杰克逊的转变，称他“吸取了惨痛教训，真正倾听选民心声，与对自己不满的人进行了真正艰难的对话，直视他们的眼睛说：‘我后悔了。’”蒂马拉朱对这群亲密的听众说：“柯林斯‘假装她支持选择权’。当她摧毁我们的基本自由和摧毁本州的经济承受能力时，她不能再躲在那个标签后面了。”本报道发布后，柯林斯的一位发言人回应了MS NOW的置评请求，发表声明攻击杰克逊在这个问题上的记录。
At that event, she touted Jackson’s evolution, saying he “learned tough lessons, really listened to his constituents, had really tough conversations with people who were upset with him, looked them dead in the eye and said, ‘I regret that.’” Collins “pretends she’s pro-choice,” Timmaraju told the intimate crowd. “She can’t hide behind that label anymore as she guts our fundamental freedoms and guts our economic affordability in the state.” After this story was published, a Collins spokesperson responded to MS NOW’s request for comment with a statement attacking Jackson’s record on the issue.
“特洛伊·杰克逊在堕胎问题上的立场发生了反复，从坚持严格的‘反堕胎’立场、不接受任何理由的例外，转变为现在表示支持所有堕胎，包括晚期堕胎，”发言人布莱克·克尔南说。“柯林斯参议员始终坚持‘支持选择权’的立场，并因长期捍卫女性权利的记录，于去年获得了计划生育联合会的表彰。”柯林斯周五重申，她不后悔2018年投票确认卡瓦诺的任命。但她表示不同意这位大法官的投票，并声称他在确认投票前曾向她保证，他认为罗诉韦德案是“既定判例”。
“Troy Jackson has flip-flopped his abortion position from a stance of being strictly pro-life with no exceptions for any reason, to now saying he is supportive of all abortions, including late-term abortions,” spokeswoman Blake Kernen said. “Senator Collins has consistently been pro-choice and was recognized just last year by Planned Parenthood for her long record of protecting women’s rights.” Collins reiterated Friday that she does not regret voting to confirm Kavanaugh in 2018. But she has said she disagrees with the justice’s vote and claimed he assured her before the confirmation vote that he believed was settled law.
但她的这些保留意见似乎无法说服许多缅因州女性，她们至今无法原谅柯林斯将卡瓦诺送上最高法院。
But her caveats don’t seem to be convincing a number of Maine women who have yet to forgive her for putting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.
71岁的独立选民雷吉·罗布内特表示，她过去常投柯林斯的票，但现在与这位参议员“意见不合的地方越来越多”。“我认为真正的转折点是卡瓦诺。当她投票支持卡瓦诺时，我简直不敢相信她投了卡瓦诺。从此我就不再支持她了，”罗布内特在南波特兰一家图书馆外接受MS NOW采访时说。
But her caveats don’t seem to be convincing a number of Maine women who have yet to forgive her for putting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. Regi Robnett, a 71-year-old independent voter, said she used to vote for Collins, but she and the senator “don’t agree as much anymore.” “I think it really changed with Kavanaugh. When she voted for Kavanaugh, I was like, I can’t believe she voted for Kavanaugh. And then went away,” Robnett told MS NOW outside a library in South Portland.
MS NOW撰稿人埃莉斯·乔丹最近主持的一场焦点小组讨论中，几位一生中至少投过一次柯林斯票的缅因州女性，批评了这位参议员对卡瓦诺的投票。
focus group held recently by MS NOW contributor Elise Jordan, Maine women, all of whom had voted at least once for Collins in their lifetimes, criticized the senator’s Kavanaugh vote.
“卡瓦诺那一票真的让我触动很大，一个女性怎么能让我们倒退，明明我们奋斗了这么多年，却要倒退回去，而她却站在那一边，我真的失去了对她的很多尊重，”小组中的一位女性说。
“The Brett Kavanaugh vote was one that really resonated with me, how a woman could put back and everything like that, knowing what we fought so hard in all these years, to be going backwards, and for her to side that way, I really lost a lot of respect,” one woman in the group said.
杰克逊还必须面对这样一个事实：民主党人在2020年曾试图利用柯林斯的卡瓦诺投票来攻击她。
Jackson must also contend with the fact that Democrats tried using Collins’ Kavanaugh vote against her in 2020.
“那就是2020年整个竞选的核心。整个竞选都围绕着布雷特·卡瓦诺。这就是全部，”一位接近柯林斯竞选团队的人士告诉MS NOW。“她在2020年已经面对过这卡瓦诺的事，并且处理得很好。”甚至一些对柯林斯支持卡瓦诺感到失望的选民，到了11月可能仍会投她的票。
“That was the entire campaign in 2020. The entire campaign was Brett Kavanaugh. It was the whole thing,” a person close to the Collins campaign told MS NOW. “She already faced this Brett Kavanaugh thing in 2020 and handled it well.” And even some voters dismayed at Collins’ support of Kavanaugh may still vote for her in November.
焦点小组中一位表示“非常失去尊重”的女性承认，她仍倾向于投票给这位参议员。
The woman in the focus group who said she “lost a lot of respect” for Collins acknowledged that she still leaned toward voting for the senator.
“我不认为那会是关键因素，”一位获准匿名发言、可自由谈论竞选情况的缅因州民主党政治内部人士对MS NOW表示，关于生殖权利，在NBC新闻的一项调查中，该议题在选民眼中国家面临的最重要问题中排名靠后。
“I don’t think that’s going to be the key thing,” a Democratic political insider in Maine told MS NOW, granted anonymity to speak freely about the race, said about reproductive rights, which ranked low in an NBC News survey among issues voters nationally see as the most important facing the country.
“我只觉得归根结底，人们能否找到途径了解特洛伊是谁？那是他的问题。我不确定他能否做到，是否有足够多的人能找到途径真正了解他是谁。” 缅因州选民记得苏珊·柯林斯投了卡瓦诺的票，但这会让他们投票给特洛伊·杰克逊吗？MS NOW
“I just think it’s going to be, at the end, are people finding a way to know who Troy is? And that’s his problem. I’m not sure he’s going to get there, that there are enough people who are finding their way to find out who he really is.” The post Maine voters remember Susan Collins’ vote for Kavanaugh, but will that make them vote for Troy Jackson? MS NOW