As president of the Maine Senate, Troy Jackson, now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Susan Collins, cosponsored a bill sending millions of taxpayer dollars to a state academy that employed his son as its designated lobbyist, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
The bill, which Jackson cosponsored in January 2024, during his final year as president of the Maine Senate, called for $13.4 million in additional taxpayer funding to the Maine Maritime Academy between 2024 and 2025. Months earlier, in July 2023, Jackson backed a state budget bill that included an additional $2 million per year for the academy, the "single biggest" funding increase to the organization in years, according to the Maine Service Employees Association. The academy thanked the legislature for the funding but argued that it needed more to keep up with "rising costs." The 2024 bill, which passed the Jackson-led Senate but did not become law, would have answered that call.
Jackson's support for the budget and funding bill came as his son, Chace Jackson, served as the Maine Maritime Academy's "legislative designee," the state agency employee tapped to lobby on its behalf. Public records obtained by the Free Beacon show that Jackson first registered as the academy's designee in December 2022, identifying himself as its "legislative affairs coordinator." He filed another annual registration form using a shortened title, "legislative coordinator," in January 2024.
Chace Jackson's arrangement with the academy was unusual. He served as the legislative designee while simultaneously representing corporate clients as a lobbyist for the Resurgam Group, the "full service lobbying" firm founded by his father's former chief of staff and current campaign adviser, B.J. McCollister. State agencies in Maine are required to appoint full-time employees as legislative designees to avoid retaining pricey outside firms for state-level lobbying. The University of Maine's legislative designee, for example, is its chief governmental affairs officer, Samantha Warren, who has held the role for nearly a decade and has not worked as an outside lobbyist during that time. None of the more than 300 active legislative designees, in fact, are registered lobbyists with outside firms, according to a Free Beacon review.
Chace Jackson's registration forms, by contrast, portray him more as an outside lobbyist than a full-time Maine Maritime Academy employee. He listed the Resurgam Group's office as his mailing address on his 2022 form, which also included a personal email address rather than one associated with the academy. It wasn't until 2024 that his registration listed an email address, phone number, and mailing address associated with the academy.
A longtime Maine legislative staffer told the Free Beacon that the arrangement suggests "the son of the Senate president received preferential treatment."
"I can't think of another time that has happened," the staffer said in reference to Chace Jackson's dueling roles as a legislative designee and outside lobbyist. "You can look at the University of Maine system, you look at the Maine Community College—they're all employees. It's proof that he was skirting the rules."
The revelation marks the latest example of how the Jackson family entrenched itself in the "system" Troy Jackson now says he's fighting against as he campaigns to unseat Collins. Jackson calls himself a "poor kid" and "fifth-generation logger" who's "running for U.S. Senate to put power back in the hands of the people and fix our broken system." In April, he said he decided to run for higher office "because the status quo isn't working" thanks to "special interests, high-priced lobbyists, and corporate greed."
As Jackson rose to the top of the Maine Senate, however, both his former staffers and his son cashed in. After serving as Jackson's chief of staff for three years, McCollister left the office in November 2021 to found the Resurgam Group. He hired Chace Jackson shortly thereafter, in 2022. McCollister's successor as Troy Jackson's chief of staff, Max Rush, joined the firm two years later in 2024.
During that year, the firm received $182,500 in lobbying compensation from nine clients Chace Jackson represented, including the multinational alcoholic beverage giant Diageo, which owns "ultra-premium" liquor brands like Johnnie Walker, the Free Beacon reported. He also represented the Maine Gun Safety Coalition as it lobbied on two gun control bills that Troy Jackson—a former Second Amendment supporter who had been endorsed by the National Rifle Association—voted for. In 2025, with his dad out of the state legislature, Chace Jackson represented just five clients. He has not registered as a Maine lobbyist in 2026.
It's unclear if Chace Jackson still works for the Maine Maritime Academy, which has not submitted legislative designee registration forms for 2025 and 2026. The Maine Ethics Commission said it stopped requiring such disclosures from the academy in 2025 because the academy is no longer considered a "state department or agency."
Chace Jackson and the Maine Maritime Academy did not respond to requests for comment. A Jackson campaign spokesman said "Troy Jackson has fought for working Mainers, and his guided [sic] by one goal: fixing our broken system so Maine's working families stop getting squeezed while the rich get richer."
Troy Jackson served as Maine Senate president from 2018 to 2024. Early in his tenure, in 2019, Chace Jackson worked as a lobbyist for a different firm, Preti Flaherty, the largest government affairs and lobbying shop in the state. There, he represented the oil and gas company Global Partners LP as it lobbied against bills that targeted the company over an "emissions controversy" from years prior, the Free Beacon reported. One of the bills died in the Troy Jackson-led state Senate.
Troy Jackson is familiar with his son's political services, having paid Chace Jackson more than $32,000 in salary during his failed 2014 congressional run, campaign finance disclosures show. Chace Jackson contributed $1,833.78 to the campaign while working for it, though $1,750 of the money was returned. Troy Jackson has not filed a campaign finance report since replacing the disgraced "oyster farmer" Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee for Senate in July, meaning it's unclear whether he is now paying his son.
