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Troy Jackson is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. He lives in Allagash.
I’m a dad, a grandpa, and a fifth-generation logger from Allagash. And as much as Susan Collins and her billionaire backers want you to think I’m the bogeyman, I’m not. I’m just a working guy who’s tired of working Mainers being ignored.
I made my living in the woods working 80-hour weeks. I know what it feels like to work harder and harder and still fall behind.
For me, it started in 1998 when billionaire landowners in Maine tried to cut our wages.
We asked Sen. Susan Collins for help. She did nothing.
So we organized. We blocked the border. We made people listen.
That’s why I got into politics. Working people aren’t powerless. We’re made to feel powerless when we stand alone.
Nearly three decades later, I’m running for the U.S. Senate because it’s about damn time working people have a say in this country, and that’s exactly why I think Collins and the billionaires are trying to take us down.
The truth is, we’ve all been lied to — and not just in the ads on TV. I always believed that government should work for people who work hard and play by the rules, but that’s not how it is.
I’ve met Mainers working two or three jobs who still can’t afford gas, groceries, or heating oil.
And where’s our senator? She hasn’t had a town hall in 25 years. She’s voting for policies that are making things worse.
Collins’ donors appear to get access and handouts. Working Mainers get left behind. Families struggling to afford groceries, medicine and heating oil shouldn’t have to write a campaign check to get their senator’s attention.
And the money she’s brought back to Maine amount to pennies compared to what we’ve lost from the policies she’s rubber-stamped.
Just last year, Collins voted to advance President Donald Trump’s budget bill, which cut Medicaid and delivered tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. Now, 60,000 Mainers are expected to see their healthcare costs rise or could lose healthcare altogether, while Elon Musk gets a fat tax cut.
That’s a choice about whose lives matter in Washington. So was Collins’ vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, who helped overturn Roe v. Wade. A vote she says she doesn’t regret.
I’m running for the U.S. Senate, but this isn’t about me. It’s about Maine people rising up and demanding the government they deserve.
Look at the ads, look at the attacks. I think the billionaires are terrified that they’ll lose their power.
Collins and her ultra-rich donors appear to be saying and doing anything they can to hold onto their power — even if it means lying about me and my family.
Their ads don’t talk about the cost of prescription drugs or heating oil. They don’t defend her votes to support ICE, or to allow Trump’s illegal war in Iran, or to endanger women’s reproductive rights.
I think she’s let us down. But I still believe that working people can have a government that works as hard as they do.
In the Maine Legislature, I fought to lower prescription drug prices, passed universal school meals, protected union jobs, expanded rural healthcare, delivered property tax relief and helped pass some of the strongest reproductive health protections in America. That’s what it looks like when you have representatives that don’t owe billionaires a thing.
I didn’t win every fight. But nobody had to wonder whose side I was on.
In the Senate, I’ll fight to lower costs, protect Social Security and Medicare, defend abortion rights, and make the wealthy pay their fair share.
I think this campaign boils down to Susan Collins and the billionaires versus the people of Maine. Collins has spent the last 30 years in Washington. I think she’s been there too long and she’s become part of the problem.
I promise you this: I’ll stand with the people of Maine every time. I don’t owe Trump or the billionaires anything. I owe the people of Maine everything.