Peter Edgecomb has been passionate about meeting the people he hopes to represent as Maine State Senator of District 35, and has been all over northern Aroostook County meeting his potential constituents and learning both their stories and concerns.
Having represented Caribou in the Maine State House of Representative for the past eight years, meeting his potential senatorial constituents has been Edgecomb’s favorite part about campaigning — particularly, reconnecting with the people he formed ties with when serving as the vocational director for schools throughout the St. John Valley.
“It’s been a real joy to make connections with people of The Valley once more,” Edgecomb said, adding that he’s recently had the opportunity to reconnect with his former students and his children’s Wisdom High School classmates.
Being Caribou’s Augusta representative for the past eight years, serving as the superintendent of School Union 122 for seven years, teaching agriculture in Limestone for 15 years and serving as the vocational director for the St. John Valley for nearly a decade, Edgecomb feels that his experiences have helped him become an effective legislator.
Among other duties, Edgecomb is on the Education Committee and served as the House chair on the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee; through both, for instance, he’s fought to combat the long-standing issue of “two Maines” and the unnecessary overregulation on small business owners while working respectfully with his fellow lawmakers regardless of their political affiliation.
“If there’s a bill on the other side of the aisle that’s good for the people of Aroostook County, I’ll vote for it,” he said.
Edgecomb described how earlier this year, when the Agriculture and Conservation departments were looking to merge into the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry and coordinated a northern Maine meeting in Bangor, “I was the first to remind them ‘you need to look at a map. Bangor is not northern Maine.’”
Resultantly, a true northern Maine meeting was held in Caribou.
The work ethic Edgecomb developed growing up the second oldest son out of 10 kids on a Limestone family farm is apparent through not only his attendance record as an educator (taking less than a dozen sick days throughout his career) to his nearly perfect voting record throughout his eight-year Augusta tenure (he missed three votes while attending his grandson’s graduation ceremony.)
If elected to the State Senate, Edgecomb said that one of his focal points will be continuing with job creation.
“Everyone says that, but there are a couple of things that really make a difference,” he explained.
“Number one, I hear it from people who are in small business — and small businesses create 90 percent of jobs in Maine — they are so saddled with regulations and actually, a lot of that is taxes,” Edgecomb described, citing the example how if a farmer discovers a mouse in a potato house, they need a permit to set a trap, they’re limited to so many traps, and they have to prove they’ve gone and checked those mouse traps daily.
One of his constituents, a small business owner, described the regulations and resulting paperwork to be three inches thick.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in the past two years trying to reduce some of the really unnecessary regulation,” he said, staunchly emphasizing that not all regulation is unnecessary. “We absolutely need to have some of those regulations, but we have to look at what we’re requiring and use common sense in the legislation that we pass,” he added. “If we can do that, maybe we can attract businesses here and once you begin to expand jobs, then it starts to help everyone else that has a small business.”
By Lisa Wilcox
Staff Writer
ALLAGASH — Sen. Troy D. Jackson is currently serving his second term in the Maine Senate, representing District 35, which includes a wide swath of Aroostook County north of Presque Isle. Prior to serving in the Maine Senate, Jackson served three terms in the House of Representatives.
Jackson was born and raised in the St. John Valley. He graduated from Allagash Consolidated Community High School and from the University of Maine at Fort Kent with a business degree. In 2004 Jackson received the Outstanding Young Alumni award from the University of Maine Fort Kent. Jackson is also a recipient of the Maine Education Association’s Friend of Education award in 2009.
Outside of his time in the Maine Legislature, Sen. Jackson works as a logger in northern Maine where he has worked for 26 years.
Considered a strong labor advocate, in recent years Jackson has led the cause for fair wages for loggers and independent truckers. While a member of the House, he sponsored several pieces of legislation addressing logging issues. Jackson served as the House chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and has served as the Senate chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Labor.
He was a member of the Governor’s Advisory Council on the Sustainability of the Forest Products Industry in Maine, which is charged with developing recommendations to improve the competitiveness of Maine’s forest products industry nationally and internationally.
Jackson was inspired to get into state government because he felt “there wasn’t much of a voice for the working man.” After receiving several phone calls from others with the same frustration, he decided to run for the House of Representatives.
One of Jackson’s many concerns is the condition of the U.S. health care system.
“Insurance companies are getting kickbacks,” he accused. “They can raise the rates by up to 10 percent without oversight, so they raised rates 9.9 percent. It’s not right.”
Jackson is also concerned with contracted workers from Canada who are taking jobs away from Mainers, especially in the logging industry.
“It’s painful to watch these Canadian trucks drive by my house with our lumber when my neighbors are out of work,” Jackson noted.
According to Jackson, he has taken part in 100 to 150 bills that have passed over the years that were a solution to somebody’s problem.
“I don’t keep score,” he said, “I just kind of move on.”
One of the more prominent bills Jackson worked on recently was legislation allowing the mining of Bald Mountain, paying special attention to make sure it doesn’t hurt the environment but will help with jobs.
Sen. Jackson resides in Allagash with his wife, Lana Pelletier, and their two children, Chace and Camden.
