Hundreds of young people packed Portland’s State Theatre on Thursday for the “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall led by Troy Jackson, the logger and former Maine Senate president challenging Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined him before an energetic crowd eager to talk about class, health care, civil rights, immigration enforcement, and political power.

“They’ve been afraid of a waitress in the House and a logger in the United States Senate,” Ocasio-Cortez said. The New York Democrat presented class as a defining theme in campaigns across the country and argued that sending Jackson to Washington would disrupt the comfortable rules governing the Senate.

“It breaks the rules for Troy to go in there,” she said. Jackson and Ocasio-Cortez displayed an easy rapport as they moved quickly through their opening remarks and spent an hour answering wide ranging questions from an audience dominated by young people.

Jackson entered the contest after replacing the disgraced Graham Platner in July. Despite being outspent by millions and attracting national media curiosity over his working class roots in rural northern Maine, he has continued gaining ground on Collins in the polls and delivered what the source described as a respectable performance across four debates.

Collins, a 30 year Senate veteran, has faced an unexpectedly difficult fight to retain her seat. Jackson pushed her to defend her confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and procedural votes supporting Trump administration legislation, including the One Big Beautiful Bill, which is already creating turmoil in rural Maine communities.

Collins appeared Wednesday at a New Balance shoe manufacturing plant in Norway, Maine, alongside former Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia independent. She criticized Jackson and Ocasio-Cortez for campaigning with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, complaining that they are “from the far left of the party.”

Manchin, who moved to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management after leaving the Senate, defended Collins before the pair departed the brief news conference. Apollo recently closed two of Maine’s largest paper mills in Jay and Bucksport, though Manchin maintained that he did not know about the firm’s role.

“Susan has been in office since I was three years old,” said Emily Austin, a student at Central Maine Community College in Auburn. Austin said Collins has had time and opportunity, adding that change can be good and expressing complete confidence that Jackson will defeat the incumbent.

Health care emerged as a leading concern, with students pressing Jackson and Ocasio-Cortez about progress toward Medicare for All. Both argued that Congress repeatedly finds trillions for endless war but cannot seem to locate the money needed to provide Americans with reliable and affordable health coverage.

One high school student asked how Jackson would sell Medicare for All to rural and older Americans influenced by “political socialization” and “propaganda.” Jackson answered, “When do you graduate? Because I have a job for you!” before discussing the challenge of reassuring people who fear losing their existing insurance.

Jackson said the public must be convinced that replacement coverage would be better while hospitals would continue receiving payments matching the care they provide. He said billionaires benefiting from the existing health care system “want to preserve a greedy, dirty, scumbag system that they have right now because it works for them; it doesn’t work for us.”

Another student described a sibling stuck on Medicaid disability service wait lists for “years at a time.” Jackson acknowledged Maine’s provider shortage and said, “We don’t pay those people like the professionals that they are, and we have put more money into that, so we have more people to give the services.”

A transgender University of Southern Maine student asked what Ocasio-Cortez would say to trans Americans who feel abandoned by the Democratic Party. She argued that attacks on trans girls represent “a strategic decision” designed to distract from efforts to limit the rights of all girls, pointing to the Trump administration’s defunding of the Title IX civil rights enforcement division.

Ocasio-Cortez also warned that the surge of funding for ICE’s immigration crackdown could erode Americans’ privacy rights and legitimize warrantless searches. Citing the attempt to denaturalize and deport Rep. Ilhan Omar, she said the Department of Justice and FBI had been “weaponized and compromised” and called for a “day one investigation into all of these agencies” if Democrats regain Congress.

The enthusiastic reception did not erase concerns about whether young Mainers will vote. Tufts University’s CIRCLE reported that, as of September, 2% more Americans ages 18 to 29 had registered for this year’s midterm contests than in 2022, while Maine recorded a 12% decline in young voter registrations.

Portland resident Sophie Garner said some people previously disengaged from politics are now trying to vote early because they fear what could happen on November 3. Event volunteer Eric Hubley remained worried, saying, “Boomers are probably 75% of the people that I see being active, and I realize they have more time.”