Troy Jackson, a powerful Maine legislator now running for Senate, once angrily threw a water bottle in a meeting after he couldn’t persuade a lawmaker to vote his way.
He yelled at another lawmaker, prompting her to post on social media that straight men were “too emotional” to be in politics. And he cursed and shouted in a meeting with the speaker of Maine’s state House, until she kicked him out of his office.
During the six years Jackson presided over Maine’s Senate, until 2024, his temper was a feature of his leadership, and one that Democratic lawmakers discussed among themselves as a problem and even raised with the governor.
That’s according to a portrait of his leadership drawn from interviews with more than two dozen people who spoke to the Washington Post, some on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating Jackson — now the presumptive Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate — or to avoid being seen as damaging Democrats’ chances of winning the seat.
His temperament is coming up as he is on the verge of replacing Democratic candidate Graham Platner, who dropped out after a sexual assault allegation he denied. The trail of scandals following Platner, including past inflammatory social media comments, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, and allegations of volatile romantic relationships, made Democrats question whether he had been sufficiently vetted to run in the race, which is crucial to retaking a Senate majority. Jackson is set to clinch the nomination this weekend after his supporters swept elections to serve as delegates to the nominating convention and his opponents dropped out.
Jackson declined to be interviewed about his temperament and clashes. BJ McCollister, a campaign adviser, acknowledged “moments when he let his frustration get the better of him” but said Jackson took responsibility and apologized when it happened.
“Troy regrets the moments when disagreements became too heated,” McCollister said, “but passion for the issues he advocates for should not be confused with physical intimidation or bullying.”
Jackson, a populist and supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) who unsuccessfully ran for governor, is seen by many as the candidate best positioned to inherit and remotivate Platner’s left-leaning, grassroots supporters because he is a fighter for many of the same causes that animated the former nominee’s rise. But some Democrats fear that Jackson’s history of conflicts with women lawmakers could hurt him in the general election against Republican Sen. Susan Collins, given that she has won past elections in the consistently blue state by appealing to independent and left-leaning women.
Jackson and his allies have acknowledged that he can lose his cool, but they have painted this quality as a byproduct of his passion for policies to improve the lives of people in Maine. Jackson has also picked up endorsements from dozens of former colleagues, including some who have described his temper or had heated arguments with him.
“There needs to be more passion when you are making the decisions we are making up there,” said Charlotte Warren, a former state representative who wrote the post about straight men not being suited for politics after she clashed with Jackson in 2021. She now supports his Senate run.
Jackson led the state Senate with a confrontational style, at times berating colleagues who disagreed with him, former colleagues said. And his intensity often veered into behavior that people working in Maine politics at the time characterized as bullying, given that he was the most powerful Democrat in the state Senate.
Jackson worked with numerous women and frequently clashed with them. The five other top leaders of the state House and Senate were women at the end of his tenure, as was Democratic Gov. Janet Mills.
One person who participated in meetings with Jackson at the time said that they felt “nervous” and worried to be in the room with him, because his outbursts could escalate so quickly.
“It was very aggressive,” the person said. “It’s one thing to be screaming when you’re just mad about the world or sad about the world. But his screaming felt like intentional intimidation. So you would feel like then, what else is he going to do?”
McCollister, the Jackson adviser, said the former Senate president had “heated, often two-way disputes” over legislation he viewed as crucial for the state of Maine.
“Troy Jackson is passionate and deeply invested in the people and policies he advocates for,” McCollister said.
In 2024, Jackson quickly became enraged in a meeting in then-House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross’ office, when the two Democrats disagreed about tactics to pass a gun control measure, two people with knowledge of the meeting said. The fight came about a year after 18 people were killed in a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.
Jackson banged on the table, cursed, and then got close to Talbot Ross’ face after he said he was done talking to the leader, according to two of the people. Talbot Ross, a civil rights advocate and the first Black woman elected to the Maine legislature, kicked him out of her office.
Another person in the room, connected to the Post by the Jackson campaign, disputed that the former Senate president was face to face with Talbot Ross or that he slammed his hand on a table and cursed. The person acknowledged that the leaders had “a heated argument” over the best way to pass a red-flag law, which would allow relatives to petition a court to temporarily confiscate weapons from someone in their household deemed a risk to themselves or others.
Despite Democratic majorities in both chambers of the legislature and a Democratic governor, several people said, Democrats in the capital, Augusta, were dismayed that they were not able to accomplish as much as they could have because the leaders did not get along and it was hard to even get them all in a room together.
“It was so difficult to maneuver because none of them would even speak to each other,” a top Democratic operative in Maine said. “On paper, we had these great majorities, but it was inept. It was very messy.”
The red flag legislation at the heart of Jackson and Talbot Ross’ disagreement did not become law that session, for example, despite intense pressure from Democratic voters to respond to the 2023 mass shooting at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston.
“When he has an issue that’s important to him, he’ll do whatever it takes to get things to a better place,” said Maureen Terry, who was the second-highest ranking Democrat in the House during the dispute. “I had about 100 meetings [with Jackson], some were really benign and some were a little more volatile, for sure,” she said. “We got some good work done. We also had some misses, for sure.”
Terry declined to comment on the meeting where Jackson clashed with the speaker. Talbot Ross and the other top leaders in the room — Kristen Cloutier, Mattie Daughtry, and Eloise Vitelli — declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
Jackson’s supporters tout his work to provide Maine children with universal school meals and to establish paid family and medical leave.
Jackson, who first ran for office as a Republican before joining the Democratic Party in 2004, was seen as particularly powerful because of his influence over the state budget. Lawmakers did not want to cross him and risk losing out on funding for their projects, three people said.
Democrats chose him as their leader in part because of his ability to win in rural northern Maine, where their party has struggled. They generally forgave him for his personal opposition to abortion and slightly slower evolution on gay rights because they knew he had a different background and district.
His 2021 argument with a member of his caucus, then-state Sen. Heather Sanborn, became legend in Augusta, where lawmakers of both parties gossiped about Jackson’s enraged confrontation with her. References to the incidents with sparse details circulated online early in Jackson’s Senate bid.
Jackson and Sanborn were on opposing sides of a bill aimed at lowering prescription drug prices — Jackson supported the bill, while Sanborn argued it was unconstitutional and would be struck down by the courts. As one meeting wrapped up, Jackson grew angry with Sanborn and confronted her, said three people in the room that day and multiple people briefed on the fight. At one point, he threw a water bottle in anger.
“He was an inch from her nose, screaming and hollering and haranguing her,” said one of Jackson’s former legislative colleagues who was in the room and did not see any physical contact.
Multiple former lawmakers recalled that Sanborn left the Senate that day and did not return for several days.
“It was pretty intense,” the person said. “I haven’t seen anything like that before or since.”
Sanborn, who is now the Maine public advocate for utility ratepayers, declined to comment.
Jackson’s campaign adviser acknowledged that the candidate threw a plastic water bottle but said he was not targeting anyone. The campaign offered two witnesses, both of whom endorsed his Senate run, to support his account.
State Sen. Mark Lawrence, who was present for the confrontation, said the bottle hit a desk before bouncing to the floor. He compared Jackson to a softball player throwing a mitt down or a tennis player throwing a racket.
Susan Deschambault, a former state senator and Jackson supporter who was in the meeting, did not see the bottle but said that Jackson took a “reprimanding” tone while yelling at Sanborn and disputed that he came close to her face.
Multiple former colleagues recalled that Jackson angrily left the room after the clash, but that he later apologized to the caucus. Word of the incident traveled quickly through Augusta, because of both that apology and Sanborn’s absence.
“The next day, of course, the other senators had heard about the incident, and he very much apologized, and I could tell it hurt him a lot,” Deschambault said.
Jackson, in a 2021 speech on the Senate floor, acknowledged that he would get “emotional” about prescription drug pricing. Sanborn, speaking right after Jackson, said she agreed with the need to lower prices but disagreed with the policy, calling it “not within our power, as a state.”
“It was unfortunate, the way it happened, but these things happen in a legislature all the time. It is not an indication of Troy’s character,” Lawrence said.
On the campaign trail, Jackson has said his comfort with challenging people is a strength. At a Friday speech in Portland, the Senate candidate said that to achieve anything, you have “to make the people in charge so uncomfortable that they can’t ignore you anymore.”
“And that’s something I actually have become pretty good at,” Jackson said.
Asked by reporters after the event if he had been fully vetted, Jackson said that people “know I wear my heart on my sleeve” and that he is “passionate about the issues,” but that there “isn’t going to be anything” that will come out and sink his campaign.
Other people Jackson has argued with are supporting his Senate bid. Warren, then a state representative, was so angry at Jackson after a 2021 confrontation in his office that she posted on social media shortly afterward that straight, white men “are too emotional to be in politics.”
Their dispute, Warren said, began when she went with other women lawmakers to Jackson’s office to try to persuade him to take up a drug decriminalization bill the House had passed. A fight ensued, and Jackson and Warren both cursed and yelled at each other, she recalled.
“There was nothing physical,” she said. “But we were very forcefully trying to win our way. It is what you do in politics. It wasn’t my finest hour. It wasn’t Troy’s finest hour.”
Warren said the two “hugged it out,” cried, and made up in Jackson’s office a few weeks later. Now, she says, she’s more focused on how Jackson’s passion could help the state of Maine.
“Is this guy going to fight for us? Yes, he is,” she said.
