Senate Democrats are rallying behind Maine nominee Troy Jackson despite a report that he fathered two children with his second cousin, and most say they have never even heard of it.
Fox News Digital approached five senators on Capitol Hill this week and asked each one a simple question: Did the report about Jackson's relationship with his second cousin, Lana Pelletier, give them any pause about backing him? Not one engaged with the substance. Every answer followed the same pattern, deny awareness, pivot to party talking points, and move on.
The responses amount to a coordinated dodge from a caucus that needs every seat it can get. Jackson, 58, a former Maine Senate president and fifth-generation logger, became the Democratic nominee in late July after the party's original candidate, Graham Platner, withdrew amid a sexual assault allegation. Now the replacement candidate carries his own set of unanswered questions, and his party's leaders in Washington appear determined not to ask them.
Maine's independent Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats, set the tone.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not going to comment on it anyway."
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland offered a similar brush-off, telling Fox News Digital he had not heard of the reports before adding that "Troy Jackson is somebody who's obviously in this fight for working people." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island skipped the question entirely and redirected to the importance of winning the seat to address "wild cost increases and rampant corruption."
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland went furthest in her deflection. She claimed no knowledge of the report, then launched into a broadside about Iran, healthcare, and the cost of living:
"We have a president who today, again, has no strategic plan about getting us out of that war in Iran, where our children are dying on the battlefield while his are getting rich."
Alsobrooks then pledged blanket support for every Democratic nominee in every state. "I'm supporting whoever the nominee, in every single state, the Democratic nominee," she said.
Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff was the most guarded. He said he had not seen the report, initially deflected to the Michigan Senate race, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed had just won the Democratic primary, and offered only a noncommittal line about Maine: "We'll see who wins."
The report that prompted the questions came from Steven Robinson, editor of The Maine Wire, who published genealogical findings showing that Jackson and Pelletier are second cousins who share the same great-grandparents. Both hail from Allagash, a small community in Aroostook County in Maine's far north, near the Canadian border. The New York Post reported that the couple has two adult sons together but, according to locals, has never been legally married, even though Jackson has referred to Pelletier as his wife. The relationship is legal under Maine law and reportedly not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region.
Jackson's campaign has not directly denied the genealogical findings. Instead, his team issued a statement casting the report as a political hit job orchestrated by Sen. Susan Collins's camp:
"Susan Collins will do anything to distract from the fact that she votes with Trump 96% of the time and has sold out working people in Maine. Personal attacks on Troy's family are shameful and desperate."
That framing treats a factual genealogical question as a campaign attack, without answering the factual genealogical question.
The cousin report is not Jackson's only emerging problem. Breitbart reported that because Jackson and Pelletier have never legally married, and Maine does not recognize common-law marriage, it remains unclear whether his Senate financial disclosures must account for her finances. As of the time of that report, Jackson had not filed a Senate financial disclosure or requested an extension. He also paid roughly $4,600 in late state income taxes last year after a tax lien over debt dating back to 2020, according to the Bangor Daily News.
For a candidate whose entire pitch rests on fighting for working people, unresolved tax debts and murky financial disclosures make an awkward fit.
Jackson landed the nomination under extraordinary circumstances. Graham Platner won the June Democratic primary but withdrew earlier this summer after a sexual assault allegation he denied. An emergency convention in Bangor on July 25 chose Jackson as his replacement, with 94% of 601 delegate votes. AP News reported that Jackson had raised roughly $1 million since entering the race, compared to more than $16 million for Collins, who has held the seat since 1997. The compressed timeline left Democrats fewer than four months to campaign.
That timeline also left almost no window for the kind of opposition research and candidate vetting that a normal primary cycle produces. The cousin report, the tax lien, and the financial disclosure questions all surfaced after Jackson was already locked in as the nominee.
The Washington Examiner detailed additional Republican attacks on Jackson's record, including allegations that he ran an anonymous social media troll account called "Canadians for LePage" to mock former Gov. Paul LePage and Maine Republicans while serving in the state Senate. A Senate Leadership Fund ad also highlighted a 2021 incident in which Jackson allegedly threw a water bottle at a female colleague, though a Maine ABC affiliate fact-check found the claim that it was an intentional attack was untrue.
A Pine Tree Results PAC advertisement went further, tying Jackson to the candidate he replaced: "Troy Jackson bragged about being one of Graham Platner's earliest supporters. When the news of Platner's Nazi tattoo came out, Jackson stood with Platner."
Collins campaign spokesperson Shawn Roderick framed the race in policy terms, saying Jackson "will attempt to sell Mainers a multi-trillion dollar bill of goods based on rhetoric that will make everything sound free, but in reality would be paid for by middle and lower income workers."
But the more telling dynamic is in Washington, where Democratic senators have made a collective decision: winning the seat matters more than knowing what they are winning it with. Not one senator Fox News Digital spoke to said they had read the Maine Wire report. Not one asked for details. Not one said the allegations warranted a closer look before committing party resources.
Whitehouse's answer was the most revealing. He did not pretend ignorance or promise to look into it. He simply stated the calculation out loud, the seat is "super important," and that is enough.
Maine Democrats already watched one nominee collapse under personal scandal this cycle. They replaced him with a candidate who was never vetted through a competitive primary, who carries unresolved financial questions, and who now faces a genealogical report his campaign has declined to address on the merits. And the national party's response, from five different senators across three different states, is identical: we do not know, we do not want to know, and we are backing him regardless.
When winning the majority is the only standard that matters, accountability is the first thing that gets dropped.
