Troy Jackson, now pushing affordability message, voted to raise taxes in Maine
Washington Examiner
Mia Cathell
August 18, 2026
Affordability has become a core pillar of Maine Democratic candidate Troy Jackson’s campaign platform, as he promises to lower the cost of living for working-class families if elected to the U.S. Senate.
But as Maine’s assistant Senate majority leader, Jackson voted to adopt a state budget that raised the tax burden on everyday residents, according to a Washington Examiner review of the former state senator’s voting record.
Jackson, while deputy head of state Senate Democrats appointed to help enact the party’s agenda in the upper chamber, threw his weight behind a $6.3 billion legislative budget in 2013 despite Republicans warning that its passage would raise taxes on Maine’s middle class.
The two-year budget, proposed by the Democrat-controlled Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, contained a 10% sales tax increase and a 14.3% increase in the meals and lodging tax.
During a heated debate on the state Senate floor at the time about whether to override then-Gov. Paul LePage’s (R-ME) veto of the multibillion-dollar budget proposal, Jackson’s GOP colleagues urged Senate Democrats to consider the budget’s financial implications for average taxpayers still reeling from the effects of the recession.
“The fact of the matter is there are significant new taxes involved in this, and it’s the folks that sent each one of us here that will be caught paying those taxes,” said Maine Senate Minority Leader Michael Thibodeau, according to an archived transcript of the chamber meeting.
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LePage noted that Maine, “one of the highest taxed states in the nation,” also had one of the lowest per capita income in the country.
“Now is not the time to ask Mainers to give more to fund government,” LePage said. He suggested instead reforming “our overly generous welfare programs” to cut down on waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars.
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