Midterm elections head into the home stretch as candidates hit Labor Day events

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Troy Jackson was a longtime labor activist and logger before he unexpectedly became the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine. On Monday, he returned to a union hall to tell a packed crowd that workers need to go to the polls this fall — to raise the minimum wage, expand family medical leave and show support for one another.

“Labor Day has never been just another holiday,” Jackson told several hundred union members at a Southern Maine Labor Council event Monday morning in Portland. “Today, here with the people I’ve fought alongside for years, I want to make a pledge about exactly what I’m going to do in the United States Senate.”

Jackson, who became the nominee in a special convention in July , is trying to whip up support in a short period of time as he attempts to unseat longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a race Democrats view as critical to winning Senate control.

He was among the candidates in key November races who spent Labor Day weekend stumping at festivals, union halls and parades as the midterms enter the final weeks with control of the House and Senate on the line.

This year's campaigns already have been combative, busy and expensive, and they are expected to get even more so as a larger number of voters tune in ahead of the Nov. 3 general election. The first statewide mail ballots already went out, in North Carolina , on Friday.

Some of the busiest states are the handful with competitive Senate races, such as Maine, Ohio, Georgia and Michigan. Republicans control the chamber, but Democrats see a path to taking it back if they can flip four seats and hold on in competitive states where they hold a seat.

Outside the Jackson event in Portland, Doug Born, a 64-year-old union stagehand from Westbrook, said Jackson's background as a logger and longtime support of organized labor are reasons to support him.

“I think he'd be the most working class guy in the Senate. That appeals to me,” Born said. “We need more union members in seats of power.”

Collins had no events scheduled for Labor Day, but had been campaigning aggressively in the days leading up to the holiday and has several stops coming up this week. She visited shipbuilder Bath Iron Works early in the morning on Sept. 1 to greet employees and promise to continue “leveraging her seniority to secure billions in destroyer contracts, infrastructure modernization, and wage enhancements,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

President Donald Trump is also stepping up his own campaigning for Republicans in the coming days. His party is set to gather this week in Dallas for an atypical midterm convention , a two-day event that Trump and other Republicans hope will whip up support for the GOP, which currently controls the White House and Congress. Typically, the party in power in Washington loses seats in Congress during the midterm elections.

Trump has also vowed to campaign for Republicans in important races, including Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska.

One of Sullivan's opponents, Democrat Mary Peltola, was scheduled to walk in the Fairbanks Labor Day Parade on Monday. In Ohio, Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown’s Labor Day weekend campaign centered on labor unions. He attended a Labor Day festival in Lorain on Sunday and other events in the state over the weekend.

Brown told the crowd at the Lorain event that “the system's rigged” against working people, and “people are working harder than ever before.” The former three-term senator is running against Republican appointee Sen. Jon Husted.

At a separate Ohio event, an armed assailant charged toward Democratic candidate for Ohio governor Amy Acton during a Sunday stop at the Canfield Fair and injured several people before he was stopped by troopers, authorities said. A spokesperson for Acton's opponent, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, said in a statement that candidates “should be able to meet with voters without having to worry about threats or violence.”

In Wisconsin, both major party candidates in one of the country's most competitive House districts — Republican Rep. Derrick VanOrden and Democrat Rebecca Cooke — were joining a parade in the western part of the state.

Democratic candidate for governor David Crowley was to speak Monday at events celebrating unions and organized labor in Milwaukee and Madison, the state’s two largest cities. Crowley supports overturning a state law, passed in 2011, that all-but eliminated collective bargaining for public workers. His Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, voted for that law when he was a member of the state Legislature. Tiffany was scheduled to attend a parade, a county fair and a Milwaukee-area street fair.

In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed marched in the Detroit Labor Day Parade and will attend other union and labor events throughout the day. El-Sayed is running against former Rep. Mike Rogers, who spent part of the weekend campaigning in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Iowa's Democratic nominee for governor Rob Sand and his running mate Dave Muhlbauer are set to attend Labor Day events in the state. Sand and Muhlbauer are running against Republicans Zach Lahn and Derek Wulf.

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Washington, Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Michigan, and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this story.