In Allagash, a hamlet of some 200 people near Canada, residents are sharply divided over Troy Jackson.
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ALLAGASH, Maine — Wayne McBreairty arrived at the town office here one recent morning on a mission.
Sporting a black Troy Jackson for Maine baseball cap, he clutched a sheet of notepad paper scrawled with a message: “Congratulations Troy Jackson on your Nomination to run for Election to the U.S. Senate.”
It was the notice that McBreairty, a longtime supporter of Maine Democrats’ newly installed replacement Senate nominee, hoped officials in Jackson’s tiny hometown would add to the digital sign outside their tiny municipal building.
“Win or lose, that’s my highlight of politics, that a friend of mine could potentially be a U.S. senator,” McBreairty said, momentarily choked with emotion.
Inside her office, Allagash’s town manager sat writing checks. Nola Begin is no fan of Jackson, whom she says didn’t do enough to help their struggling community as he rose through the political ranks over two decades to become president of the Maine Senate.
Three years ago, they clashed when Jackson ran unsuccessfully for the position Begin now holds. She couldn’t understand why one of the most powerful politicians in the state wanted the job at all.
“We have functions in this community that he never shows up to. We have deaths in this community that he never shows up to,” Begin said. “We don’t see Troy here in this community.”
Gleeful about flaunting Jackson’s victory, McBreairty handed Begin his note, wondering whether she would be willing to post the message.
She stared at it silently for 10 seconds, her expression betraying nothing, before confirming that she could take care of his request the next day.
“Thank you for doing that,” McBreairty said. “I just thought it would be appropriate to give him recognition.”
“Absolutely,” Begin concurred. “Nothing wrong with that.”
As he takes on veteran Republican Sen. Susan Collins this November in one of the marquee races for control of the Senate, Jackson is betting that his background, including an early career in the logging industry, will allow him to reach the rural Mainers who have increasingly drifted away from the Democratic Party. An oft-repeated stump slogan invites voters into a movement not from the left or the right, but from the bottom.
But even in Allagash, a one-road hamlet within spitting distance of the Canadian border, its 200-odd residents are sharply divided over their most famous son.
For some, Jackson’s elevation to Senate candidate — he replaced Maine Democrats’ original nominee, Graham Platner, who withdrew in a cloud of scandal — is a moment of pride.
National politicians don’t typically come from a place such as Allagash. It’s so remote that half the town doesn’t have cell service and the radio almost exclusively picks up French-language stations broadcasting from Quebec. Like much of northern Maine, Allagash has been in economic and population decline for decades, though it’s now sustained in part by tourism — canoeing on the adjoining Allagash River and hunting and snowmobiling in the surrounding woods.
“Most people think that one person can’t make a change and they can. One person can make a difference,” said Darlene Dumond, who runs Two Rivers Lunch, the only restaurant in town. “But I don’t know if anybody ever thought that [would be] a man coming from a small little place like Troy Jackson. There are millions that identify with him.”
Jackson continued to win reelection to the state legislature for two decades, even as the historically Democratic region he represented trended more conservative. In 2020, he received 59 percent of the vote in his Senate district, while Collins won more than 67 percent of Aroostook County, where Allagash is located.
His supporters insist that Jackson retains the authentic appeal of an outsider who will fight for the working class.
“He’s not going to be in the pocket of anyone,” Dumond said. “I doubt that that will happen to a man from Allagash. It just doesn’t happen like that here.”
Others are more skeptical of his ability to draw in Republicans.
“Should you have your camera on my face right now?” Begin told a reporter when asked about the prospect, contorting into what might be described as a quizzically derisive scowl.
In a community that maintains close ties to logging — a visitor will lose count of the number of trucks driving by stacked with timber — Jackson’s opponents resent how a man who long ago pivoted to politics still claims the mantle of logger. It feels inextricable from their broader complaint that Jackson never did anything for their community, wasn’t focused on helping the people of northern Maine when in power, unlike fellow Aroostook County native Collins.
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“When I look at Troy and he’s holding that chainsaw, that’s ridiculous. He’s an impostor,” said Karie Kelly, who beat Jackson in the 2023 local election. Kelly compared Jackson to her husband, whom she said still spends half the week away at a logging camp after 30 years in the industry: “He doesn’t represent the true men that put their blood and sweat into these woods.”
The split in Allagash is certainly political; Jackson’s biggest fans are Democrats, his loudest critics Republicans.
But it is also intensely personal. The community is full of lifelong residents who are related to one another and know everyone’s business. Some people won’t speak openly about Jackson and the Senate race for fear of offending friends or family on the other side.
Jackson’s mother, Colleen McBreairty, said she stopped checking social media because of how nasty the discussions have become.
“I don’t think I understand it,” she said, seated on her screened porch decorated with Jackson campaign signs. “If someone from our little town, a young man or a young lady, did well, I’m happy for them. So I don’t understand that logic, that mindset. I really don’t.”
Hanging over everything is the recount.
In March 2023, during the final stretch of his tenure in the state Senate, Jackson sought to become Allagash’s elected executive, known as the first selectperson. He faced, among others, Kelly, a housewife who said she ran to process the grief of her son’s death five years prior.
“The town really pulled together when my son passed away and I thought, you know, just give a little back,” she said in an interview.
Kelly — who wore a blue “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt, a derisive reference to former president Joe Biden — said there wasn’t much of a campaign, other than calling friends to vote for her. She beat Jackson, 78-70.
Then Jackson, citing concerns about “only one person seeing the ballots,” requested a recount. It ignited a furor locally, particularly after Jackson’s son raised the possibility of tampering by Begin, who oversaw the election. The final result was nearly identical: 77-71.
“I was very insulted. And he didn’t even show up for the recount. And that was even more insulting,” Kelly said. “He didn’t even, like, acknowledge me. He didn’t congratulate me.”
Though she was proud of her service as first selectperson, including a Christmas party she organized for the children in town, Kelly said she felt shunned by Jackson’s supporters, some of whom she had considered friends. The following year, months into her second one-year term, she resigned.
“It wasn’t worth the heartache,” she said. “I tried real hard, but the town was so split down the middle. His side hated me so bad. They hated me with a vengeance.”
Those who were pulled into the drama, including Begin, remain offended by the incident. So do some of Jackson’s supporters, who believe it has been overblown and used to paint him in an unfairly negative light.
“The man had a right to ask for a recount. Oh, and that was blasphemy,” said Wayne McBreairty, who has no direct relation to Colleen. “God almighty, to think that somebody would ask for a recount in this town. God almighty, he should have been tarred and feathered.”
Dumond said the locals who dislike Jackson are really driven by “sheer jealousy” of someone who achieved so much success away from Allagash. The gripes that he doesn’t spend enough time in town and never did anything to help them, she said, are just an excuse.
“Did Susan Collins come here and sit at your table and have tea with you all the time?” Dumond said. “When we come home to the bubble, you have to make your way back in the bubble and get their trust back. You’re still an outsider.”
Begin is aghast at that suggestion.
“I would never be jealous of a bully,” she said. “And you can print that.”
Once McBreairty left the town office, Susan McBreairty, Allagash’s clerk and Wayne’s sister-in-law, walked over from her desk to consult with Begin about his request.
Another local Jackson skeptic, she did not want to put up the congratulatory message. It could be seen as an endorsement of Jackson, she reasoned, and then they might have to do the same for Collins.
McBreairty messaged a friend on Facebook: “can a town put a congratulations on the marquee sign congratulating Troy?”
The response came almost immediately.
“Can they? Yes. Should they no. This is where having a policy is important,” the friend wrote, adding a winking addendum: “Put it out for vote.”
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