AUGUSTA — Sen. Troy Jackson (D-Allagash) was awarded the Edie Beaulieu Legislative Award from the Maine AFL-CIO at their annual convention held on Oct. 20 in Bangor. The Maine AFL-CIO’s Edie Beaulieu Legislative Award is given to a legislator who demonstrates outstanding service on behalf of working families in Maine.
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Sen. Troy Jackson (D-Allagash), left, was recently presented the Edie Beaulieu Legislative Award by Sen. John Patrick (D-Rumford) during the annual Maine AFL-CIO convention held in Bangor.
“I was incredibly honored to receive this award,” Sen. Jackson stated, “and I humbly accepted it on behalf of the men and women across the state who get up every day and go to work to make our state a better place. My job in the Legislature is to protect their rights and honor those who have come before me fighting for workers’ rights in Maine, and it is even more of a thrill for me personally to know that this award is named for an Aroostook County native,” he added.
The award’s namesake is Edie Beaulieu, a former State Representative from Portland who served as the House Chair of the Labor Committee. She was born Edith Saucier and was raised in a French speaking household in northern Maine. Her early education was confined to a one-room school house in the Aroostook County village of Plaisted which she had to walk a mile and a half to get to each day. After the family’s move to Portland to be closer to a brother at the Baxter School for the Deaf, Edie attended Cathedral High, one of the city’s Catholic female secondary schools. Beaulieu later worked at a job cleaning offices at the Portland Press Herald and became active in public service serving first on the Portland School Board and then in the state legislature.
Presenting the award was Sen. John Patrick (D-Rumford), a colleague of Sen. Jackson, Patrick cited Jackson’s unwavering commitment to his constituents — often accepting calls late at night and early in the morning. Patrick also praised Jackson’s service to working class families while serving on the Legislature’s Labor Committee.
Sen. Jackson was first elected to the Maine House in 2002, serving three terms in the House before moving to the Senate in 2008. Jackson served as the Senate Chair of the Labor Committee from 2008 until 2010, and he now sits as the ranking Democratic member of the Legislature’s Labor, Commerce, Business and Research Committee. Sen. Jackson has served on the Labor Committee in each term he has been in the Legislature.
