Report: Democratic Senate Nominee Troy Jackson Fathered Two Children with His Second Cousin

The Democratic Party appears to be struggling to find a senatorial candidate in Maine who can avoid some truly unusual national headlines.

First, ex-candidate Graham Platner stumbled through scandals involving everything from Nazi tattoos to a very serious sexual assault allegation that saw many prominent Democrats denounce his candidacy.

This would all lead to Platner dropping out in early July.

Now, the second candidate from the Democratic Party to challenge GOP Sen. Susan Collins is also raising eyebrows, albeit for a completely different reason.

Democratic senatorial candidate Troy Jackson has come under scrutiny after a report from The Maine Wire’s Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson claimed Jackson’s high school sweetheart and “longtime squeeze” also happens to be his second cousin.

As the New York Post put it: “Jackson, 58, and Lana Pelletier share two adult sons and the same great-grandparents.”

According to Robinson’s report, those two great-grandparents are Thomas Pelletier and Edith Thibodeau. The daughter of Thomas and Edith would be Troy Jackson’s grandmother, while their son would be Lana Pelletier’s grandfather.

That would make Jackson and Pelletier second cousins by blood, on the Pelletier side.

RELATIVE ATTRACTION: We can confirm that Troy Jackson and his longtime partner are second cousins.

They have two children together https://t.co/L9i3ALy7Wt pic.twitter.com/OvtA6PVOrC

— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) July 30, 2026

The report also said that Jackson and Pelletier have been together for the entirety of his political run, which now spans decades.

(And according to Robinson, Jackson has also gone through quite an ideological transformation over the years, going from a “pro-gun, pro-life, conservative working-class rabble-rouser” to a “pro-gun-control, pro-late-term-abortion socialist state Senate president.”)

Interestingly, Robinson reported that Jackson and Pelletier have often referred to each other as husband and wife over the years, but claimed that the two have never actually been legally married.

“Locals in the historically Catholic village of Allagash, however, are quick to set the record straight with the dry precision of people who have known both families — or just the one family, depending on your perspective — for generations: The couple is not, and has never been, legally married,” the report said.

That all being said, while certainly unusual, there does appear to be a massive difference between first-cousin and second-cousin relationships, both legally and biologically.

Citing the National Society of Genetic Counselors and Journal of Genetic Counseling, Robinson wrote: “First cousins share a pair of grandparents. They inherit, on average, about 12.5 percent of their DNA from the same recent ancestors. That shared genetic material raises the risk of recessive genetic disorders in any children roughly twofold compared with the general population — from a baseline of about 2–3 percent for major birth defects to roughly 4–6 percent.”

The legality of such a union is also in favor of Jackson and Pelletier, at least in Maine.

While Maine generally prohibits first-cousin unions (you can get a genetic counselor to sign off on a first-cousin relationship), there is no such law or restriction prohibiting second-cousin marriages in Maine.

Given the lineage outlined by Robinson, it seems rather clear that Jackson and Pelletier would fall into the latter category of cousin-based marriages.

Despite these headlines, according to Real Clear Polling, Jackson is polling ahead of Collins a few months before the November midterms.

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