The state’s top hunter and fisherman, saying he’s perplexed by U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson’s curious evolution to the left, is missing the good old days – when Jackson was pro-gun.
“What has happened to the Troy I once knew?” Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine’s executive director David Trahan asks in a new Facebook post.
Trahan and Jackson were both state legislators, the former a Republican, the latter having served as Democrat president of the state Senate.
Jackson, an ex-Republican, had been in lock step with the hunting lobby even later as a Democrat until he veered left following the 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston.
Jackson maintained a strong pro-gun voting record for decades, earning high marks and past endorsements from both the 8,000-member alliance and the NRA, and receiving the former’s President’s Award for Legislative Service in September 2023.
Following a mad gunman’s mass slaughter of 28 people in Lewiston a month later, Jackson flipped on guns.
He supported measures like safe firearm storage and led his legislative caucus to pass background check and waiting period legislation.
Trahan, noting his old friend’s endorsements by the Maine Gun Safety Coalition and anti-gun Democrat Socialists of America, asked in his Facebook post, “Is this the best we can do?”
The socialist group “also wants to eliminate the Department of Defense, that would be the end of Bath Iron Works and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard,” Trahan says.“Troy accepted their endorsement with open arms. What has happened to the Troy I once knew?”
Jackson clearly made a calculated political decision to shuck his pro-gun attributes, believing the electoral momentum was now with the liberals.
In his matchup against five-term U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, Jackson is hoping against hope a good share of the state’s 300,000 sportsmen will still find a place for him on their ballots come November.
In a related development, the gun-control coalition refused earlier this week to endorse Trahan’s predecessor, Matt Dunlap, the alliance’s former executive director who is now running in northern Maine for a congressional seat as a Democrat.
Dunlap, an avid hunter, is running against former two-term Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who has been endorsed by the NRA, in the rural district where guns are popular.
If these “ Democratic SOCIALISTS “ can have their way with us ……defund the police ….take away our guns …end the prison system ….fool us with their “ Restorative Justice “ nonsense …Health Care for All ……..bla bla bla …
…….they WILL be able to CONTROL our lives down to the VERY smallest detail .
Maine people need to wake TF up and listen very closely to what they actually say .
They are telling us that is what they want to do .
What is it the voters do not understand ?
Maine is just another One of Fifty Dominos in this Socialist / Communist game .
Troy Jackson will do nothing of “ real value “ for the people of Maine .
Banging his fist on the podium and throwing water bottles in Washington will do Maine no good what so ever .
VOTE WISELY .