Democrat Troy Jackson is campaigning for Senate in Maine as a Bernie Sanders-style political disrupter who — unlike Sen. Susan Collins (R) — is rejecting corporate PAC money.
“We will defeat Susan Collins, and we’ll reclaim our Senate seat from the billionaires and corporate PACs who have her in their pockets,” Jackson wrote on social media in July. “Let’s get to work.”
But as recently as two years ago, Jackson helped lead a PAC that received tens of thousands of dollars from tobacco firms, pharmaceutical companies and affiliated PACs, gambling companies and other industry bogeymen when he led Democrats in the state Senate, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
The financial disclosures from his six years at the helm of his party’s political machine in Maine, from 2018 to 2024, show the tension between Jackson’s political-outsider persona on the campaign trail and the roughly two decades he spent in Augusta, the state’s capital, embedded in the state’s politics.
Campaign finance-related issues have dominated the race. In ads and on the trail, Jackson has painted Collins as co-opted by special interests, and Collins and her allies have sought to remind voters of Jackson’s long history as a legislator and his son’s past as a lobbyist.
Collins has amassed a huge campaign war chest in part by relying on corporate PAC donations in this and in past races, and she has benefited from a super PAC backing her, Pine Tree Results, which has funded millions of dollars in ads boosting her and attacking her opponents.
A different super PAC that supported Collins’s 2020 election, 1820 PAC, has been embroiled in controversy. ProPublica reported this month that FBI agents had examined allegations that the defense contractor Navatek funneled $150,000 through a shell company to the super PAC as Collins helped secure Navy funding for the firm. The Post confirmed that the FBI closed the early-stage inquiry into whether the defense contractor made concealed political contributions benefiting Collins in exchange for help securing millions of dollars in federal contracts. An FBI spokesperson said the agency found nothing implicating Collins or her campaign, and Collins denies wrongdoing.
The state’s U.S. Senate seat is critical in the battle for the chamber, where Republicans hold a 53-47 advantage. Polls suggest a close race between Jackson and Collins, who is seeking a sixth term in the blue state where President Donald Trump is deeply unpopular.
Jackson listed himself as a “principal officer” of Maine’s Senate Democratic Campaign Committee several times on his annual financial disclosure forms from 2017 through 2024. A group of top Democrats helped run the PAC, and Jackson has distanced himself from the political group on the campaign trail.
“We didn’t take pharma money, but the state Senate caucus, I mean, I was one of a number of people that made those decisions, what we took and what we didn’t,” Jackson told reporters in an August press gaggle when asked about the issue. “Now, this is my campaign, we’re not taking corporate money.”
Campaign finance reports filed with the state show that the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee raised thousands of dollars from pharmaceutical companies, including from Merck and Johnson & Johnson. The tobacco giant Altria donated $12,000 to the PAC over the years, with global tobacco company Swedish Match also contributing thousands. The gambling industry donated significant sums to the PAC when Jackson helped helm it, as well, including $3,000 from DraftKings and more than $4,000 from FanDuel.
“Troy Jackson is refusing corporate PAC money in his campaign for U.S. Senate, unlike Susan Collins who has taken millions from corporate PACs and was eyed by the FBI for steering millions in taxpayer dollars to her major donor until President Trump dismantled the team investigating it,” a Jackson spokesman said in a statement.
Jackson has also pushed for campaign finance restrictions in Maine, including legislation approved in 2021 to ban corporations from directly donating to candidates in state races. That law, however, permitted companies to continue donating to caucus PACs such as the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee.
The public has little insight into Jackson’s campaign finances as he runs for Senate, given the shortened timeline of his campaign. Democrats chose him as their nominee this past summer after Graham Platner stepped aside amid a sexual assault allegation that he denies. Jackson has not yet filed a federal financial disclosure form or his quarterly campaign finance reports. Both are due in October, after he received an extension on his personal financial disclosure.
Money in politics, though, has been central to Jackson’s campaign.
“Thirty years living the Washington, D.C., lifestyle changes people,” one ad from a Jackson-supporting group says. The ad criticizes Collins for opposing a total ban on stock trading for members of Congress. “They’re making millions of dollars, while we can’t even afford groceries and gas. We need to tell Susan Collins to stop the congressional stock trading.”
In July, Jackson committed to a pledge named after Maine’s state motto to reject all money from corporate PACs, lobbyists who represent the fossil fuel and pharmaceutical industries, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby.
“It means supporting and fighting for a constitutional amendment to overturn the disastrous Citizens United ruling,” Jackson wrote on social media, referring to the Supreme Court ruling that allowed corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts of money independently on elections. “It means voting to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. And it means advocating for publicly financed federal campaigns modeled after Maine’s historic Clean Election System.”
Jackson’s calls to rein in spending and curb stock-trading are part of his larger campaign promise to shake up the establishment. He has stressed that he clashed with governors from both parties during his time at the helm of the state Senate, portraying himself as a passionate and brash agent for change.
He said in a town hall in Gorham earlier this month that he was “not afraid to fight” for the policies he believes in. “I’m not afraid to push leadership.” Jackson said both a Democratic governor and a Republican governor vetoed dozens of his bills, and he was not beholden to either side.
Jackson has also emphasized his career before politics in an effort to identify with working-class voters and connect with voters’ anger with establishment politicians.
“I’m a fifth-generation logger and the son of a public school teacher, a dad who worked 16-hour days, and that still wasn’t enough,” Jackson says in a campaign ad in which he urged Mainers to vote for “change.”
Meanwhile, the Collins-supporting super PAC is running ads referring to Jackson as “Augusta politician Troy Jackson” in an attempt to tie him to the state’s unpopular political machine.
Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine, said it makes political sense for Jackson to lean in to his origin story — a logger with humble roots from rural northern Maine. But voters may not accept that pitch from someone who has been so entrenched in the state’s political system, he said.
“Anyone who’s been in a leadership position in American politics, it’s hard to make a claim with a straight face that you’re an outsider,” Brewer said.
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