Troy Jackson fires back at Susan Collins over relationship comment

Susan Collins brought up Troy Jackson's family tree in an interview, and Jackson came out swinging, accusing her of attacking his kids and his personal life. Maybe that's fair. Maybe it isn't. But here's the thing nobody in this race wants to say out loud: this is what Maine voters get instead of a conversation about their own lives, which have gotten more expensive and less secure every year Collins has been in Washington.

We don't love the tabloid detour either. Voters didn't send anyone to the Senate to litigate a candidate's family history, and if that's genuinely the line of attack Collins is running, it's a tell. When a four-term incumbent starts talking about her opponent's personal relationships instead of her own thirty-year record, that usually means the record is the problem, not the opponent.

Jackson isn't a perfect messenger and this isn't a flattering news cycle for him either. Getting baited into a defensive posture over your own family in week one of a general election fight is not exactly a sign of message discipline. But the instinct to fire back rather than duck is at least honest, and Maine voters can usually smell the difference between a candidate protecting his kids and a career politician protecting her seat.

None of this moves the needle on what actually matters in that state: energy costs, a fishing industry getting strangled by regulation, and a border crisis that reaches Maine too. If this is the opening argument of the campaign, both camps are underestimating an electorate that has bigger worries than a family tree.