Troy Jackson, the likely Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, has built his campaign around a rugged North Woods identity, but federal disclosure forms reveal he spent nearly a decade drawing pay as a political operative for a Boston-based painters union.
Jackson, a former Maine Senate president, is set to clinch the nomination at a statewide convention on July 27 in Bangor after both of his top rivals dropped out and endorsed him. He has described himself as a "logger" from Aroostook County and cast his candidacy as a fight for working people against a "system rigged against working people." What he has not mentioned in public statements is the intermittent paychecks he collected from District Council 35 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, AFL-CIO, a union headquartered not in the Maine woods but in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.
Federal labor organization disclosure forms, reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, show Jackson earned $32,074 from the painters union in 2017, $19,720 in 2021, $21,237 in 2023, and $21,820 in 2025. His titles on those filings: temporary "political employee" and temporary organizer. A separate filing shows he pulled $42,526 in 2019 from Machinists District Lodge 4 in Lisbon Falls, Maine, a union that, at the time it paid him, reported zero members.
Jackson's campaign website leans hard on his blue-collar roots. His bio reads:
"Troy Jackson grew up in Aroostook County, a poor kid in a town full of poor kids."
The painters union's own newsletter tells a different part of the story. It says Jackson joined the union while working at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, a facility more than 300 miles south of Aroostook County. Neither the campaign website nor Jackson's social media posts mention his years of paid union political work.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that both the Jackson campaign and the District Council 35 political director did not respond to inquiries. That silence leaves voters to square two versions of the same candidate: the logger who grew up poor in a small town, and the political operative who drew regular pay from a union headquartered steps from Harvard's Arnold Arboretum in one of Boston's rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods.
The gap matters because Jackson is not running as a labor organizer. He is running as a man of the land. Voters deciding whether to trust that image deserve to know about the federal filings that complicate it.
Jackson's path to the nomination accelerated after Graham Platner, the original Democratic nominee, withdrew from the race. Platner stepped aside after rape accusations, which he has denied, caused his campaign to collapse as supporters revoked endorsements. Twelve candidates initially scrambled to replace him, but the field narrowed fast.
The Washington Examiner reported that Jackson secured commitments from nearly two-thirds of the 601 convention delegates before Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former public health official Nirav Shah both dropped out on Sunday and endorsed him. Bellows said "the most important thing we can do in this moment is to unite to defeat Susan Collins." Shah echoed the sentiment, saying Collins "will not be defeated without a unified Democratic Party."
Jackson-aligned delegates won more than 90 percent of available slots on the first day of selection, including all 149 in Cumberland County, Maine's most populous county, according to Fox News. Jackson addressed supporters Saturday night:
"This movement has always been bigger than one person. It's about taking on a system rigged against working people."
But the "movement" Jackson inherited is the same progressive machinery that backed Platner. Bernie Sanders and his organization Our Revolution endorsed Jackson. So did Rep. Ro Khanna, a former Platner backer. The New York Post noted that Jackson campaigned alongside Platner on Sanders' "Fighting the Oligarchy" tour, raising the question of whether Maine Democrats are once again prioritizing blue-collar optics over thorough vetting.
Jackson's policy positions read like a Sanders campaign checklist. His website calls for dismantling and abolishing ICE and for taxing "the billionaires" to "make sure greedy corporations pay their fair share." During his failed 2026 gubernatorial primary, he proposed a 4 percent surtax on income above $1 million and an "interstate compact" to impose a minimum 5 percent annual wealth tax on households with assets above $1 billion.
On July 10, Jackson posted on Facebook:
"Anybody with eyes and a heart knows the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza. We have the power to end it. When I'm in the Senate, I'll never vote in favor of U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel."
That pledge puts Jackson sharply at odds with the bipartisan consensus on Israel policy and gives Republican incumbent Susan Collins, first elected to the seat in 1996, a clear line of attack in a general election.
The compressed timeline has left the entire Democratic field scrambling. Breitbart reported that Maine Democrat Dan Jenkins, a delegate applicant, captured the mood: "I don't think anyone's happy that we're in this situation. We would have preferred that this had broken many, many months ago and then Graham had exited the race when there was a time for a democratic process."
The union pay is not the only transparency problem trailing Jackson. He faced an ethics flap over holding mortgages on two residences, one in Augusta, the state capital, and one in Allagash, a small town in far northern Maine, both of which he apparently claimed for mortgage purposes as primary residences. The details of whether a formal ethics complaint was filed, and any outcome, remain unclear.
Jackson's personal life has also drawn scrutiny. His campaign website describes licensed clinical social worker Lana Pelletier as his "partner" and "longtime girlfriend." But a 2012 Maine Senate Democrats press release, issued when Jackson became assistant Senate majority leader, described Pelletier as his "wife." No public explanation has been offered for the shift in terminology.
Pelletier, who lists her pronouns as "she, her" and identifies as a "Caucasian, Cisgender Woman" on the online therapy platform Headway, wrote to the Maine legislature to advocate a ban on flavored tobacco products. In that testimony she said, "We can prevent a new generation from becoming addicted to nicotine and suffering the devastating health consequences that come with it."
For a candidate now running on the Sanders wing's full agenda, Jackson's political history is anything but consistent. He began his career as a Republican in 2000, later ran as an Independent, and did not become a Democrat until 2004. Along the way he voted against same-sex marriage and supported abortion restrictions, positions that would disqualify most candidates seeking progressive support today. Newsmax reported on the chaotic replacement process that has left candidates debating policy positions they have not fully prepared for.
Former political operative Kurt Bardella told the New York Post: "I think you're going to start seeing a real coalescing behind Troy Jackson. If they don't get this one right, they're toast, they're cooked, they're not going to win." The Daily Show was less diplomatic, observing that "it seems Democratic consultants just want someone stereotypically masculine instead of, you know, someone who's actually good."
Maine Democrats now face a general election against Collins with a nominee who calls himself a logger but drew pay as a Boston union political operative, who pledges to abolish ICE and cut off military aid to Israel, who started his career as a Republican, and who has yet to answer basic questions about his financial disclosures. Collins has held the seat since 1996. She has survived tough cycles before.
Voters can decide for themselves whether a candidate who omits a decade of union paychecks from his public biography is the kind of straight shooter who deserves a promotion.
