Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson faces reports of fiery temper

Troy Jackson is about to be the guy Maine Democrats hand their Senate hopes to, and the first thing voters are learning about him is that he apparently made his own House Speaker's life miserable. Rachel Talbot Ross isn't some rival operative with an axe to grind. She was the top Democrat in the Maine House while Jackson ran the Senate. If the stories about him berating her are even half true, that's not a personality quirk, that's a guy who can't share power with someone on his own team without losing his temper.

What's telling is the timing. This is surfacing right as the party is trying to consolidate around him as the nominee against Susan Collins. Democrats in Maine had other options, and they're circling the wagons around someone whose own colleagues apparently found him hard to work with in Augusta, let alone in Washington.

We'd take this less seriously if it were one disgruntled staffer venting anonymously. It's not. It's a fellow leader in his own caucus, in a role that requires the two of them to actually function together to pass anything. Voters deserve to know what kind of temperament they're sending to the Senate, especially when the guy's own party seems to already know the answer and is hoping nobody else asks.

Collins has her critics, plenty of them, and this isn't an argument that she's flawless. But Maine voters ought to at least get an honest look at the alternative before Democrats finish the coronation. Right now that alternative looks like a man who couldn't keep the peace with his own House Speaker.