In March 2023, U.S. Senate hopeful Troy Jackson, then the president of the Maine Senate, took credit for having "secured" a new cell phone tower in his rural town of Allagash, a project he dedicated to the town's "hardworking families" who "have been left behind when it comes to this essential service." Unmentioned in his statement was the fact that the tower was built on his family's land, an arrangement that can generate landowners' thousands of dollars a month in profits, real estate records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.
Built by Wireless Partners, LLC, the tower was completed in December 2022, according to its Federal Communications Commission registration. Four months prior, in August 2022, Wireless Partners' sister company, Rising Tide Towers, signed a lease agreement with Louis and Patricia Pelletier to build the tower on their property, records show. Louis and Patricia Pelletier are the parents of Jackson's longtime partner and the mother of his children, Lana Pelletier. They are also Jackson's cousins, according to the Maine Wire, which reported that Jackson and Lana Pelletier share the same great-grandparents, making them second cousins.
While the lease agreement between Rising Tide Towers and the Pelletiers does not detail the financial side of the arrangement, rural landowners can earn more than $2,500 a month by leasing their land to carriers. The tower on the Pelletiers' land changed owners in 2023, but the coordinates listed on its FCC registration match those listed in the 2022 lease agreement, indicating that the lease remains active.
Jackson laid the legislative groundwork for the tower years before his family signed the lease. In 2019, he sponsored a bill directing the state to develop a "plan to expand cellular telephone service" in "underserved areas." Two years later, in June 2021, he voted for the bill that created the Maine Connectivity Authority, a state agency tasked with expanding internet access in the state's rural areas. That agency awarded a $180,000 grant to Wireless Partners to "provide accelerated low-cost internet access" in December 2022. The cell tower on the Pelletiers' land, meanwhile, is "operated by AT&T and supported by FirstNet Authority," a federal agency that has paid AT&T billions of dollars to operate a nationwide broadband network, according to Jackson's press release.
Wireless Partners and the Pelletier family did not respond to requests for comment. The Jackson campaign said that when "a lack of connection delayed first responders and critical emergency services that Mainers needed, Troy stepped in and delivered multiple cell towers to communities up North, which local first responders called a 'godsend' that could 'save a life.'" The campaign did not address the Allagash tower's location or answer questions regarding Jackson's role in placing it there.
The cell tower marks the latest instance in which Jackson's family benefited from his power as Maine Senate president.
Jackson's son, Chace Jackson, spent years working as a lobbyist as Jackson led the Senate from 2018 to 2024. He most recently represented the "full service lobbying" firm Resurgam Group, which Troy Jackson's former chief of staff and current campaign adviser, B.J. McCollister, launched in 2021. Chace Jackson joined the firm, which pledged to "leverage our strong existing relationships" in the state legislature to "help deliver results," a year later in 2022.
Chace Jackson was in high demand during his father's final year as Senate president. During that year, his firm received $182,500 in lobbying compensation from nine of Jackson's clients, including corporate giants like the multinational alcoholic beverage behemoth Diageo, the Free Beacon reported.
Troy Jackson's moves as Senate president were often aligned with his son's lobbying interests. Though Jackson was known as a Second Amendment supporter who earned an endorsement from the National Rifle Association as recently as 2022, he flipped his position as his son lobbied for Maine's leading gun control group, voting in favor of one bill that imposed a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases and another that strengthened Maine's "yellow flag" gun confiscation law. Chace Jackson lobbied in favor of both bills on the Maine Gun Safety Coalition's behalf.
Chace Jackson also represented the oil and gas company Global Partners LP in 2019 as it lobbied against a pair of bills that targeted the company over emissions violations at its petroleum storage facilities in South Portland. One of the two bills died in the Troy Jackson-controlled Maine Senate, the Free Beacon reported.
Years later, in 2024, Troy Jackson cosponsored a bill calling for $13.4 million in additional taxpayer funding to the Maine Maritime Academy. At the time, Chace Jackson served as the academy's "legislative designee," the title given to the employee of a state agency tapped to lobby on its behalf, the Free Beacon reported. State agencies in Maine are required to appoint such designees because they are barred from retaining pricey outside firms for state-level lobbying. But Chace Jackson served as the academy's designee while simultaneously representing corporate clients for the Resurgam Group, an unusual arrangement.
News of Jackson's familial dealings comes as the Democrat runs a tight race against Republican incumbent Susan Collins, a contest that could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate come 2027. It's not the first time he's faced scrutiny in relation to the Pelletiers: In August, the Maine Monitor reported that Lana Pelletier "told an officer he 'pushed her around' after Jackson broke down a door and punched a man at a Fort Kent home in 1988." Jackson faced a misdemeanor charge and paid a fine.
