Maine's Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Troy Jackson has made "high-priced lobbyists and corporate greed" a centerpiece of his campaign pitch, but state records show his own son lobbied for a Fortune 500 oil company on a bill that died in the Senate Jackson controlled.
Chace Jackson, a lobbyist and legislative liaison at Preti Flaherty, the largest lobbying firm in Maine, was listed on a May 2019 contract representing Global Partners LP, an oil and gas company that operated petroleum storage facilities in South Portland. Global Partners had retained the firm the same day Maine lawmakers introduced two bills responding to federal findings that the company violated emissions limits at those facilities. One of those bills, which would have required independent air quality inspections of Global Partners' operations, never made it out of the Maine Senate. Troy Jackson was Senate president at the time.
The other bill, a narrower measure requiring the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to notify local governments when it learns of air quality violations, passed both chambers and was signed into law. The tougher inspection bill, the one Global Partners had reason to worry about, was removed from consideration by the Senate on May 28, 2019, just twenty days after the company hired Preti Flaherty.
State lobbying records show Global Partners paid Preti Flaherty nearly $3,000 for work on the two bills. Chace Jackson was one of three lobbyists listed on the contract. Another was Severin Beliveau, the firm's founding partner and a longtime power broker whom Down East magazine once profiled under the headline "The Influencer," calling him "virtually hard-wired into the Democratic establishment." Beliveau, a former state lawmaker, had been described as "Mr. Democrat," "Darth Vader," and "the man behind the curtain."
The federal government had found Global Partners in violation of emissions limits back in 2014. The company agreed to settle those charges roughly five years later, around March 2019, weeks before the Maine legislature took up the two response bills. Global Partners vice president Drew Carlson told the Washington Free Beacon that the company "had concerns about certain provisions of the bills, particularly those that could have substantially increased the cost of handling and supplying fuels necessary for commerce and everyday life in Maine and the broader region."
Carlson framed the lobbying effort as collaborative rather than adversarial:
"Rather than actively opposing the legislation, Global chose to focus on being part of the solution. We provided policymakers with information about our operations, environmental protections and the potential economic impacts of the proposals, while working collaboratively with the State of Maine and the City of South Portland to address the underlying concerns."
Global Partners did not formally submit testimony opposing the inspection bill. It did not need to. The bill died without a fight, pulled from the Senate calendar before it could reach a vote.
A Troy Jackson campaign spokesman told the Free Beacon that Jackson did not serve on the committee handling the inspection bill and said there "is no evidence Troy changed his legislative positions because of Chace's work." The spokesman added that Jackson "has fought for working Mainers" and that his campaign "is guided by one goal: fixing our broken system so Maine's working families stop getting squeezed while the rich get richer."
The campaign did not address the broader question: why the Senate president's chamber removed the bill from consideration, or whether Jackson took any steps to keep it alive. Troy Jackson does not appear to have criticized Global Partners publicly at the time.
That silence sits awkwardly beside the rhetoric Jackson has deployed since launching his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins. In an April 2026 interview with Maine's public broadcasting network, Jackson explained why he was running for higher office:
"I'm tired of [seeing] good bills that would help lower prescription drug costs, protect workers, stop the spraying of harmful chemicals and so much more get vetoed. I'm tired of folks being told to hold on, wait a little longer or that now is not the right time. All thanks to the work of special interests, high-priced lobbyists and corporate greed."
A bill that would have subjected an oil company's facilities to independent air quality testing qualifies as the kind of measure Jackson now says he is "tired" of seeing fail. It failed in his own chamber, while his own son was on the lobbying contract for the company it targeted.
The Jackson family's professional overlap did not begin with Global Partners. Federal Election Commission records show that Troy Jackson's 2014 congressional campaign paid Chace Jackson more than $32,000 in salary, making him the campaign's highest-paid staffer. Chace also contributed $1,833.78 to his father's campaign, though $1,750 of that money was later refunded.
By February 2019, two months after Troy Jackson became Senate president, Chace was listing himself as a "government relations liaison" at Preti Flaherty on FEC donation records. The overwhelming majority of his campaign contributions during that period went to Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. He continued identifying Preti Flaherty as his employer in filings through March 2020.
It remains unclear exactly when Chace Jackson started at Preti Flaherty. He has since removed the job from his LinkedIn profile and made the account private. But his work at the firm is documented: he authored Preti Flaherty's "2018 Election Day Primer" in November 2018 and the firm's "End of Session Update" in June 2019. Chace Jackson's lobbying career generated substantial revenue during the years his father ran the Maine Senate.
The lobbying firm's relationship with the Jackson family extended beyond Chace's employment. Preti Flaherty also represented Troy Jackson personally in a 2020 lawsuit he filed against the sellers of his former Augusta home, claiming they had failed to disclose defects including an insect infestation. The firm took the case on a contingency fee basis, meaning it would collect a share of any payout rather than billing hourly.
Troy Jackson sold the Augusta home in 2021 for a profit of $103,000 but continued pursuing the lawsuit, claiming roughly $7,000 in remaining damages for extermination services and water damage. The case dragged on for four years. In 2023, someone filed an ethics complaint against Jackson with the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices over the contingency fee arrangement. The outcome of that complaint is not public.
Preti Flaherty did not respond to the Free Beacon's request for comment.
After leaving Preti Flaherty, Chace Jackson joined the Resurgam Group in 2022, a self-described "full service lobbying firm" founded by B.J. McCollister, Troy Jackson's former chief of staff and current campaign adviser. Resurgam pledged to "leverage our strong existing relationships" in the state legislature. In 2024, the last year Troy Jackson served as Senate president, Resurgam received nearly $200,000 in lobbying compensation from nine of Chace Jackson's clients.
Chace Jackson's client list shrank to five in 2025, after his father left the legislature, and dropped to zero in 2026. Resurgam has since merged with another firm called Frame Strategies. Whether Chace still works there is unclear.
Troy Jackson won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate under unusual circumstances. The party's original preferred candidate was sidelined by a sexual assault allegation, and Maine Democrats handed Jackson the nomination at a convention that drew scrutiny of its own. Jackson, who describes himself as a fifth-generation logger and working-class champion, now faces Sen. Susan Collins in a general election where he will need to sell voters on his credibility as an outsider willing to challenge powerful interests.
That pitch grows harder to sustain when the candidate's son built a lobbying career inside the very legislature his father led. The Global Partners contract is one data point in a pattern: Chace Jackson worked at the state's dominant lobbying firm while his father ran the Senate, then moved to a firm founded by his father's own chief of staff, and generated his highest revenue during his father's final year in power. When Troy Jackson left office, the clients vanished.
Jackson's campaign has also faced questions about his handling of the Graham Platner controversy and other matters that have complicated his carefully constructed populist image. The fallout from the Platner scandal reshaped the entire Maine Senate race and left Jackson as the party's standard-bearer almost by default.
None of this proves Troy Jackson personally intervened to stop the inspection bill. His campaign is right that no smoking-gun evidence has surfaced. But the circumstantial picture is damning enough to demand answers Jackson has not provided: Did he support the bill? Did he try to save it? Did he know his son was on the other side?
Running against lobbyists is easy. Explaining why your son was one, and why the bill his client opposed died on your watch, is the part Jackson has not figured out yet.
