SHOCKING: Maine Democrats’ Senate Pick Faces Scrutiny Over Second Cousin Affair

Maine Democrats spent weeks scrambling to find a credible challenger to Sen. Susan Collins after their original nominee, Graham Platner, dropped out of the race amid allegations of sexual assault from a former girlfriend, which Platner has denied. Their eventual pick, former state Senate President Troy Jackson, is now facing an entirely different kind of scrutiny, this time over his personal life.

According to a report from independent journalist Steve Robinson, editor-in-chief of the Maine Wire, Jackson, 58, is in a long-term relationship with his high school sweetheart, Lana Pelletier, and the two share the same great-grandparents, making them second cousins. The couple reportedly has two adult sons together, Chace and Camden.

Robinson traced the family connection through genealogical records. He found that Jackson’s maternal grandmother and Pelletier’s paternal grandfather were siblings, which made Jackson’s mother, Colleen McBreairty, and Pelletier’s father, Louis Jr., first cousins. That relationship, in turn, makes Jackson and Pelletier second cousins, sharing great-grandparents Thomas Pelletier and Edith Thibodeau.

Jackson and Pelletier grew up together in Allagash, a tiny town of roughly 230 to 240 people in Aroostook County near the Canadian border, and attended Fort Kent High School together. The report notes that such relationships, while certainly unusual by mainstream American standards, are not entirely uncommon in that remote corner of northern Maine, where small, tight-knit communities can see family lines cross over generations.

Legally, there is nothing preventing the relationship. Maine law does not prohibit marriage between second cousins. The state did, at one point, ban first-cousin marriage outright, but lawmakers amended that law in 1987 to permit such unions if couples undergo genetic counseling and obtain a physician’s certification that any children would carry an acceptably low risk of physical or cognitive impairment. Second cousins face no such restriction whatsoever.

What has raised eyebrows is not the legality of the relationship but the fact that Jackson has, at various points throughout his political career, publicly referred to Pelletier as his wife, despite the two apparently never having legally married. Maine does not recognize common-law marriage, which means the couple’s decades-long relationship carries no formal legal status, regardless of how it has been described.

That distinction could matter beyond the optics. Senate candidates and sitting senators are required to file detailed financial disclosures covering their own income, assets, and liabilities, along with those of a spouse. Because Jackson and Pelletier were never legally married, it remains unclear whether Jackson is obligated to disclose her finances the way he would be if she were formally his wife. As of this week, Jackson had neither submitted a Senate financial disclosure nor requested an extension, according to reporting that cited Townhall’s Matt Vespa.

This is not the first time Jackson’s personal finances have come under scrutiny. The Bangor Daily News has reported that Jackson paid approximately $4,600 in overdue Maine income taxes last year after a tax lien was filed related to debt dating back to 2020. Separately, a Republican state legislator filed an ethics complaint against Jackson in 2023, alleging that he misrepresented his residency after purchasing a home in Augusta while continuing to list Allagash as his residence in legislative records.

Jackson’s political evolution has also drawn attention. Robinson’s report describes Jackson as having started his political career in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a pro-gun, pro-life, working-class Democrat from rural Maine, before shifting over the following two decades into a pro-gun-control, pro-abortion-rights figure more aligned with the progressive wing of his party. That transformation mirrors a broader pattern among rural Democrats who have moved sharply leftward to remain viable within their national party.

Jackson was formally nominated at a special Democratic Party convention on July 25 after Platner’s abrupt exit from the race. Democrats view Maine as one of their best opportunities nationally to flip a Republican-held Senate seat, given that Collins has represented the state since 1997 and has faced increasingly competitive challenges in recent cycles.

Jackson’s campaign was quick to respond once the report began circulating, characterizing the coverage as a distraction from Collins’ voting record. A campaign spokesperson told the New York Post that 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,” and described the reporting on Jackson’s family situation as an attack on his family.

Whatever the merits of that framing, the story spread rapidly across conservative media and social platforms once it broke. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., posted on social media asking whether Democrats would now defend cousin marriage. Conservative commentator Nick Sortor was similarly blunt, writing that Democrats appeared to be struggling to find candidates who were not, in his words, “total freaks,” and noting that under the reported family tree, Jackson’s own children would technically be his third cousins as well as his sons.

Jackson is far from the first public figure to have a relationship with an extended family member draw scrutiny, and some defenders have pointed to historical precedent. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was married to his second cousin once removed, Regina Peruggi. Albert Einstein, too, married a cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who was both his first cousin on his mother’s side and his second cousin on his father’s side. Whether those comparisons will do much to blunt the political fallout for Jackson remains an open question.

Democrats are already bracing for a difficult general election fight in Maine even without this complication. Republicans, through the Senate Leadership Fund, have already committed more than $42 million to defeat Jackson, according to Associated Press reporting. Collins, 73, has sought to frame Jackson’s agenda as socialist, a message that Republicans are likely to amplify heavily between now and November.

Jackson has not publicly addressed the reported relationship with Pelletier since the story broke. His silence has only fueled further speculation and commentary online, with many users on social media expressing shock that a sitting former state Senate president’s personal life had gone largely unexamined by the mainstream press for decades until an independent, conservative-leaning outlet uncovered it.