Before he was running for U.S. Senate as an opponent of “greedy corporations” and “high-priced lobbyists,” Troy Jackson was the leader of Maine Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, which accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from corporate PACs and lobbyists as Jackson led the upper chamber in the Pine Tree State, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
The Free Beacon reviewed the Maine Senate Democratic Campaign Committee’s (SDCC) campaign finance disclosures from 2018—the year Jackson was elected president of the Maine Senate, as well as the year the Portland Press Herald identified him as the committee’s “principal officer”—to 2024, Jackson’s final year in the state legislature. They show that the committee, for which Jackson served as “principal officer,” received nearly $54,000 from corporate PACs, including those associated with pharmaceutical giants like Cigna, financial giants like Bank of America, and energy giants like Avangrid, Maine’s primary power utility. It also received more than $130,000 from firms registered to lobby the state legislature in Maine and more than $22,000 from individual lobbyists.
Together, the contributions make up more than $207,000. They also stand in stark contrast to Jackson’s rhetoric on the campaign trail as he runs against Republican incumbent Susan Collins. Jackson, a self-described “fifth-generation logger” and “working-class voice,” has said Collins “sold out to lobbyists and special interests” while he “fought for working Mainers.” He’s said his campaign “is guided by one goal: fixing our broken system so Maine’s working families stop getting squeezed while the rich get richer.” And he’s said he’s running for office “because the status quo isn’t working” thanks to “high-priced lobbyists and corporate greed.”
Jackson has been especially critical of the pharmaceutical industry and of Central Maine Power, the electric utility that is a subsidiary of Avangrid and serves more than 650,000 Mainers. As recently as May, when Jackson was running for governor, an “issues” page on his campaign site said “Maine patients shouldn’t be at the mercy of greedy pharmaceutical companies” and accused Central Maine Power of moving “money to Wall Street investors” while reaping “egregious utility profits.”
A number of pharmaceutical giants, however, contributed to the Maine SDCC through their corporate PACs when Jackson led the state senate. Cigna Healthcare donated nearly $9,000 between 2022 and 2024, records show. Mylan gave $5,000 in 2018. After the company merged with Upjohn to form Viatris, the new company gave another $1,375 in 2023 and 2024. Avangrid, Central Maine Power’s parent company, also repeatedly contributed to the committee, giving $15,500 between 2022 and 2024. In 2018, Central Maine Power itself gave the committee $1,000.
Jackson removed the “issues” page from his website sometime after May 16, internet archives show, replacing it with a more generic “priorities” page that calls to “lower the cost of prescription drugs” and “make sure greedy corporations pay their fair share” but does not go into detail attacking “Big Pharma” or Central Maine Power. His campaign told the Free Beacon that “Susan Collins has sold out to special interests” while “Troy Jackson has fought for working Mainers” to fix “our broken system so Maine’s working families stop getting squeezed while the rich get richer.”
Jackson has also attacked “high-priced lobbyists,” blaming them for killing “good bills that would help lower prescription drug costs, protect workers, stop the spraying of harmful chemicals and so much more.” But the Maine SDCC took $131,625 from a who’s who of registered lobbying firms while Jackson led the state senate, including Pierce Atwood, which has represented pharmaceutical companies like Merck & Co. and PhRMA, and Preti Flaherty, which has represented gas companies like Global Partners and NRG Energy and employed Jackson’s son, Chace Jackson, as a lobbyist when Jackson led the state senate.
Chace Jackson, in fact, spent years lobbying the state legislature while his father served as its most powerful figure. At Preti Flaherty, he represented Global Partners as it lobbied against a 2019 bill that targeted the company for emissions violations and that died in the Jackson-led Senate, the Free Beacon reported.
Three years later, in 2022, Chace Jackson joined the Resurgam Group, a “full service lobbying” firm launched by Jackson’s former chief of staff, B.J. McCollister, who, prior to joining Jackson’s office, served as executive director of the Maine SDCC and now advises his Senate campaign. In 2024, Jackson’s final year in the Maine Senate, the firm received nearly $200,000 in lobbying compensation from nine of Chace Jackson’s clients, including corporate giants like the multinational alcoholic beverage behemoth Diageo and the state’s leading gun control group, the Maine Gun Safety Coalition, the Free Beacon reported. Jackson was known as a Democratic supporter of the Second Amendment and was repeatedly backed by the National Rifle Association but voted in favor of two gun control bills that Chace Jackson lobbied for.
The Maine SDCC was tasked with maintaining Democrats’ majority in the upper chamber and preserving Jackson’s position as senate president. Its X page often promoted Jackson, writing in April 2020, “Troy Jackson fights for patients. Every day. In Maine, Senate Dems fight for #patientfirst healthcare.” The committee did not respond to a request for comment.
Jackson has faced criticism from Republicans over his son’s lobbying. A new ad from the conservative Senate Leadership Fund dubs Jackson “just another dirty politician,” citing his son’s status as “one of the highest-paid lobbyists in town.”
Read the full article here
