BOSTON—The likely Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, Troy Jackson, is billing himself as a "logger" "from the North Woods of Maine." He is also an operative for a painters union based in Boston, Massachusetts, according to federal and state disclosures, a job for which he earned nearly $100,000 over the past decade.
Federal disclosure forms filed by District Council 35 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, AFL-CIO, indicate that Jackson worked for the labor organization intermittently from 2017 through 2025, with titles including temporary "political employee" and temporary organizer.
Jackson earned $21,820 from the painters union in 2025, $21,237 in 2023, $19,720 in 2021, and $32,074 in 2017, the records show. He earned another $42,526 in 2019 from Machinists District Lodge 4 in Lisbon Falls, Maine, a union that at the time reported it had zero members.
Jackson was president of the Maine Senate from 2018 to 2024, serving as a state senator from 2008 to 2014 and again from 2016 to 2024. He ran for governor of Maine earlier this year but lost in the primary. He’s being tapped by Maine Democrats as a late-in-the-process replacement for Graham Platner, who stepped aside as his campaign faltered amid rape allegations and disclosures that he was a phony.
The painters council newsletter says that Jackson joined the union while working at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard—more than 300 miles south of Aroostook County. Jackson’s campaign is emphasizing the roots: "Troy Jackson grew up in Aroostook County, a poor kid in a town full of poor kids," his campaign website said.
The painters union headquarters in Boston is nestled on a side street in the rapidly gentrifying Roslindale neighborhood, which is also home to the city’s progressive, Harvard-educated mayor, Michelle Wu. The union building is steps away from Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum. At the Arboretum the "loggers" are tenured Harvard professors and doctoral students studying plant biology and climate change, and the website includes not only an acknowledgment that it "sits on land long inhabited by Indigenous Peoples" but also that it is "on property purchased with wealth from goods produced by enslaved persons." Also nearby is the Forest Hills stop on the Boston commuter rail and Orange Line subway, surrounded by high-end restaurants such as Brassica, which offers a "Dry Aged Duck Frites" for $76.
Jackson’s public statements have described him as a logger and omitted any mention of his work as a political operative for a Boston-based labor union.
Jackson’s household income also includes earnings from his longtime girlfriend Lana Pelletier. A 2012 press release from Maine Senate Democrats announcing Jackson’s elevation to assistant Senate majority leader described her as his "wife," but his campaign website now describes her as his "partner." Listings on online psychotherapy platforms—Headway, Rula—for Pelletier, a licensed clinical social worker, indicate that, unlike Sarah Jukaku, the psychiatrist wife of Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Pelletier does accept insurance. The Headway website lists her pronouns ("She, her") and says she identifies as a "Caucasian, Cisgender Woman." It describes her as a "client-centered mental health therapist."
Pelletier wrote to the Maine legislature to advocate a ban on flavored tobacco products. "We can prevent a new generation from becoming addicted to nicotine and suffering the devastating health consequences that come with it," she wrote.
Jackson’s political stances are hard-left. In a July 10 social media post, he wrote, "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."
His campaign website lists as priorities "dismantle and abolish ICE" and "tax the billionaires and make sure greedy corporations pay their fair share."
As a candidate for governor, he proposed a 4 percent surtax on income above $1 million, along with an "interstate compact" to impose a minimum 5 percent annual wealth tax on households with assets above $1 billion.
He also faced an ethics flap over having mortgages on residences in Augusta and in Allagash, both of which he apparently claimed for mortgage purposes were primary residences.
The Democratic candidate will face Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, who was first elected to the seat in 1996. The Democrats are set to finalize their choice on Saturday July 25, but Jackson has been consolidating support in recent days at county nominating meetings.
The Jackson campaign and the political director of District Council 35 did not respond to inquiries seeking comment from the Washington Free Beacon.
