Maine Democrats had a problem. Their Senate candidate, Graham Platner, had to be removed from the ticket over Nazi ties. So the party went looking for a replacement — someone clean, someone electable, someone without, say, a catastrophically awkward personal life.

They found Troy Jackson.

Jackson, the Maine Democrats' new Senate pick, has two adult sons — Chace and Camden — with his longtime partner Lana Pelletier. Pelletier is his second cousin. Jackson and Pelletier share the same great-grandparents: Thomas Pelletier and Edith Thibodeau. Lana's grandfather, Louis Sr., and Troy's grandmother, Albertine, were siblings.

The Maine Wire reported it plainly: "Troy Jackson and his longtime partner are second cousins." The outlet noted, "In a sign of how insular and remote Allagash is, Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson has two children with his second cousin, Lana Pelletier, whose father is cousin to Jackson's mom."

Allagash, Maine, has a population of 240. It sits in the St. John River Valley, and by all accounts it's the kind of place where everyone knows everyone — apparently in every sense of the word. Jackson and Pelletier are high school sweethearts, which sounds charming right up until you remember they were already related before they started dating.

Clay Travis summed up the reaction most people were having: "He married his cousin and had kids with her?!"

Now, second cousins sharing children is legal in Maine and in some other parts of the country. Nobody's alleging a crime. But we're not talking about the law here. We're talking about a political party that had to bench one candidate for being a Nazi sympathizer and a rapist, conducted what one can only assume was an exhaustive search for a replacement, and landed on a man whose family tree is a wreath. The vetting process is not the issue. The talent pool is the issue.

Democrats in Maine will argue that Jackson's personal life shouldn't disqualify him from public service. And in a vacuum, sure. But this isn't a vacuum. This is the follow-up act to a Nazi rapist. Context matters. Optics exist. And someone in that state party had to have known this was going to be the first headline.

This isn't just a Maine problem for Democrats. It's a party-wide inability to find candidates who can survive a basic background check. Across the country, Democrats keep putting people on ballots who generate more opposition research than voter enthusiasm. The bench isn't thin — it's transparent.