Susan Collins Says She Won't Bring Up Troy Jackson's Second Cousin

Susan Collins just told a reporter she will not bring up the fact that Troy Jackson fathered two children with his second cousin. Then she paused and added that she did not know whether people already knew. The reporter pointed out she had, in that very sentence, brought it up. Collins said it was up to people to decide if it mattered.

That exchange, from an interview with Politico this week, has become the most shared moment of the Maine Senate race so far. It is hard to miss why. The line lands with a dry thud that feels both careful and cutting. You can hear the calculation in it. She is drawing a boundary while stepping right over it.

The underlying detail is not new in Maine. Reports in July and August traced the family tie and noted that Jackson and his longtime partner, Lana Pelletier, share the same great-grandparents. They have two adult sons together and have never married, according to those accounts. Maine law does not bar second cousins from marrying, and nothing here suggests any illegality.

What changed this week was the framing. Collins, the Republican incumbent, was asked whether Jackson’s personal life should be relevant to the campaign. Her answer turned a private fact into a public test. Voters now get to weigh not only the detail itself but also how it is being used. That is the quiet shift. The story is no longer just about a family tree. It is about what a campaign thinks voters should do with that tree.

I keep returning to the reporter’s pushback. “But you just mentioned it.” That moment matters because it names the game. A candidate can say they will not emphasize something and still make sure everyone hears it. Collins did exactly that. She kept her hands clean while putting the fact on the table. It is a familiar move in politics, yet it still stings when you see it up close.

Jackson’s campaign has called the focus on his family a shameful distraction. He has declined to discuss his personal life in detail. Some Democratic operatives have brushed the reports as gossip. Others have stood by him without addressing the genealogy claims directly. The result is a race where one side is feeding the story by saying it will not feed the story, and the other side is asking people to look past it.

There is more context that voters in Maine are weighing. Jackson replaced the party’s original nominee, Graham Platner, who stepped aside after rape accusations. That sequence has made vetting a theme for Collins. She has said vetting is very important and pointed to the failure with Platner as a lesson. She has also suggested Jackson struggles to control his temper, citing a decades-old police report that described an assault charge and a dispute involving Pelletier. Pelletier has said statements attributed to her in that report are not accurate.

None of this is the kind of news that makes people cheer. It makes them lean back and think about what they want from a candidate. Do they care about a family tie that is legal and long-standing? Do they care more about how a rival chooses to talk about it? Do they care most about policy, or do they see character as policy? There is no clean answer, and that is the point. The interview did not settle anything. It opened a door and let people walk through with their own judgments.

I felt a small jolt reading the quote. Not outrage. Something quieter. A worry that this is how we decide now. Not by arguing taxes or health care first, but by testing how far a personal detail can travel before it breaks. Collins knows the line she walked. She also knows the line is legal and old. That tension is what makes the moment stick. It is not a scandal in the legal sense. It is a choice about what to spotlight and what to pretend you will not spotlight.

Maine’s Senate race is close. Recent polling aggregates show Jackson with a narrow lead. Both campaigns are running attack ads on costs and records. The personal thread now runs under all of that. It will not disappear because both sides have incentives to keep it alive in different ways. One side by saying it will not emphasize it. The other by asking voters to ignore it.

What stays with me is the ordinary weight of it. Two adult children. A partner of forty years. A family tie that would not raise eyebrows in many small towns until a campaign put it under a light. The light is on now. Voters will decide what it shows.