Troy Jackson, the newly nominated Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, has been in a long-term relationship with his second cousin, and the couple share two adult sons, an independent journalist's report has revealed.
Jackson, 58, a former logger and onetime president of the Maine State Senate, won his party's nomination at a special convention on July 25 to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Less than a week later, journalist Steve Robinson published genealogical records establishing that Jackson's partner, Lana Pelletier, is his second cousin. The two attended Fort Kent High School together and have been described as high school sweethearts.
Robinson's report, shared on X, traced the family connection through public records. Jackson's maternal grandmother, Albertine Pelletier O'Leary, and Pelletier's paternal grandfather, Louis A. Pelletier Sr., were siblings. That makes Jackson's mother, Colleen McBreairty, and Pelletier's father, Louis Jr., first cousins, and Jackson and Pelletier second cousins who share the same great-grandparents.
Locals told Robinson that despite Jackson having referred to Pelletier as his wife in the past, the couple has never been legally married. Robinson noted that such relationships are legal under Maine state law and are not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region near the Canadian border, where Jackson grew up in the village of Allagash, a community of just 237 people as of the 2020 census.
Jackson's campaign responded to the New York Post's inquiry with an emailed statement that did not address the genealogical findings directly. Instead, the campaign pivoted to Jackson's general-election opponent:
"Susan Collins will do anything to distract from the fact that she votes with Trump 96% of the time and has sold out working people in Maine. Personal attacks on Troy's family are shameful and desperate."
The statement did not confirm or deny that Pelletier is Jackson's second cousin. It did not address whether Jackson and Pelletier have ever been legally married. And it offered no challenge to the genealogical records Robinson cited.
Neither the Maine Democratic Party nor the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee returned requests for comment.
Since 1985, Maine law has prohibited marriages between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, siblings, and relationships involving nieces, nephews, aunts, or uncles. The original statute also banned first-cousin marriages outright. An amendment passed roughly two years later softened that restriction: first cousins may now marry in Maine if they present a certificate of genetic counseling signed by a physician certifying that their potential children face an acceptably low risk of physical deformity or cognitive impairment.
Second-cousin marriages fall outside these prohibitions entirely. Nothing in the statute bars the relationship between Jackson and Pelletier. But legality and political palatability are two different things, and Jackson now carries a biographical detail into a high-profile Senate race that his campaign plainly would have preferred to keep quiet.
Jackson is not the first Democrat to face personal-life scrutiny in this race. He secured the nomination only after the party's original candidate, Graham Platner, withdrew from the contest following allegations of rape by an ex-girlfriend. Platner dropped out on July 8, just two days after the accusation surfaced.
The Platner implosion forced Democrats to scramble. National figures who had backed him were left explaining away their endorsements. Rep. Ro Khanna publicly admitted he had misjudged the situation, and prediction markets at one point gave Platner a 94 percent chance of exiting the race.
Jackson was supposed to be the steadier replacement, a veteran state legislator with deep roots in northern Maine. The special convention nominated him just over two weeks after Platner's exit. Now, barely a week into his candidacy, Jackson faces a disclosure that his campaign has chosen to dismiss rather than engage.
The pattern is hard to miss. Democrats have cycled through two Senate candidates in a single month, and both have drawn headlines for their personal lives rather than their policy platforms. The party had already watched prominent Democrats distance themselves from Platner once the allegations became public. Whether national Democrats will treat Jackson's situation differently remains an open question, one the DSCC's silence does nothing to answer.
Several gaps in the public record remain. Jackson has not confirmed or denied the genealogical connection Robinson documented. He has not addressed whether he and Pelletier have ever been legally married, despite having referred to her as his wife. The campaign's sole response attributed the entire matter to Susan Collins, a framing that treats verified genealogical records as a partisan smear rather than a factual disclosure.
Robinson, for his part, presented the findings straightforwardly. He noted the relationship's legality and its regional context. The report did not accuse Jackson of wrongdoing. It simply established a family connection that Jackson had never publicly disclosed, one that voters might reasonably want to know about before casting a ballot.
The episode also drew renewed attention to the broader turbulence in the Maine Democratic field. High-profile Democrats had rallied around Platner before his exit, and the party's rapid pivot to Jackson was meant to project stability. That projection lasted six days.
When a campaign's first instinct is to blame the opponent for a factual report about its own candidate, voters are right to wonder what else hasn't been disclosed, and why the people asking for their trust won't answer a straight question.
