Maine Primary Voters Send Big Money Packing

On June 20, a new round of Federal Election Commission filings revealed that a conservative-aligned super PAC—bearing the deceptive name Real Change PAC—channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars into Maine’s 2nd congressional district primary in an attempt to engineer a favorable matchup for Republicans.

Maine voters, however, had other ideas.

Hannah Pingree, former speaker of the state House and daughter of Democratic congresswoman Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine-01), won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, with Nirav Shah, the former director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, finishing second. Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from rural Aroostook County, and former president of the state Senate, finished third. Jackson led the pack with the most small-dollar donors and the most union endorsements, but he trailed Pingree and Shah, having the least support from super PAC IEs and big money donors.

Graham Platner, an oysterman and Marine Corps veteran (Iraq and Afghanistan) won the U.S. Senate primary, defeating Maine’s current governor Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign on April 30 after trailing Platner.

In the 2nd Congressional district, which makes up 92% of the state’s total land, nearly all of rural Maine, State Auditor Matt Dunlap defeated state Sen. Joe Baldacci, and brother of former Gov. John Baldacci, in the race to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Jared Golden.

Dunlap was supported to the tune of $500,000 by the conservative Real Change PAC, which figured Dunlap would be the easier candidate for the GOP’s Paul LePage, Maine’s former governor, to defeat. In 2011, LePage made news when he refused to meet with the state NAACP to its members to “kiss my butt.” Baldacci was backed by the moderate Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which thought Baldacci stood the best chance in a district that supported Trump over Harris, 54% to 44%.

Both the Senate and the House race in Maine will be critical in determining whether Democrats can wrest back control from Republicans of either chamber come November.

Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed both Jackson and Platner during his “Fighting Oligarchy” appearances last August. Jackson was a key leader in Maine in  Sanders’s presidential campaigns in Maine in 2016 and 2020. Platner’s campaign resembled the working-class populist campaigns of independent Dan Osborn in Nebraska and Nathan Sage in Iowa, even though Sage, like Platner, ran as a Democrat.

Platner received ongoing criticism for his personal life, tattoos and past relationships with women before he was married, including a New York Times investigation. The Times’ investigative reporters failed to mention that the most salacious charges against Platner that they reported on were leveled by Lyndsey Fifield, a former Heritage Foundation employee who dated Platner 10 years ago. In 2018, Fifield co-founded the group “Ladies for Kavanaugh” and publicly defended the current Supreme Court justice against charges by Christine Blasey Ford, made during his Senate confirmation hearings, that he had tried to rape her when they were teenagers.

For his part, Platner says Fifield’s accusations are politically motivated. Platner’s wife Amy Gertner has vigorously defended him. He defeated Mills easily with 72% of the vote.

Voters rank their candidates

Maine and Alaska are the only states with ranked choice voting (RCV) in elections for statewide office. RCV allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third and so on. If a candidate receives more than half of the first choices, the candidate wins. If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped and the voters who ranked that candidate first will have their next choice count for their vote. This process continues until two candidates remain and one candidate receives a majority.

RCV in both primaries and the general election eliminates the disadvantages often faced by progressive candidates when better funded or better-known candidates argue voters are wasting their vote on the progressive candidate. For example, RCV was critical in the winning campaign of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Both Dunlap and Pingree initially trailed but eventually overcame the other candidates on subsequent tabulations. Pingree benefitted from an RCV alliance between herself, Jackson and fourth place finisher Secretary of State Shanna Bellows, who teamed up to defeat Nirav Shah.

Shah received significant financial support from 314 Action Fund, a Super PAC that has been linked to secretly routed money connected to Republican and other conservative donors. 314’s goal was to pick a Democrat, either easier to beat or more aligned with the the group’s own views. It spent $650,000 in the last days of the campaign on ads to elect Shah. At least some of those funds came from groups promoting school vouchers.

In response, Pingree, Jackson and Bellows urged their supporters to rank the other two either their second or third. Once Bellows was eliminated, Pingree had a substantial lead over Jackson, and when he was eliminated, she defeated Shah.

Earlier this year Troy Jackson challenged his primary opponents to join him in signing the “peoples pledge.” The pledge, initiated by Elizabeth Warren in her 2012 Senate campaign, requires the candidates to repudiate all so-called independent expenditures. And if they benefit from IEs, their campaign must donate half the cost of those expenditures to a charity.

Unsurprisingly, Jackson’s opponents refused to sign the pledge. In addition to Shah’s support by 314 Action Fund, Pingree benefitted from about $750,000 in expenditures from the Maine Conservation Voters Action Fund, known for receiving donations from moderate Democratic donors. After his opponents refused to pledge, Jackson received significant independent support from several labor unions.

Jackson’s endorsement by the Maine AFL-CIO was a first for the group (in a primary) and was a key element in his campaign. In fact, it’s unlikely he would have run without it. Yet, the political action funds of other environmental groups did not step up with support despite his strong record on environmental and renewable energy issues as president of the state senate. Jackson won the northern and rural counties that constitute Congressional District 2. But Pingree outpolled Jackson in her mother’s Congressional District 1 in the southeast, which includes Portland and its suburbs. Jackson has had a long history of winning in Trump territory across rural Maine, which would have all but guaranteed beating the Republican candidate in the general election, but with Jackson’s support Pingree should win as well.

Maine’s gubernatorial primary demonstrates that fighting big money can be a winning issue. Rural and progressive populist candidates like Troy Jackson are unlikely to ever receive corporate or big money IEs on their behalf. In primaries this year, across the nation, secretive IEs have had a huge influence supporting winners from California to Illinois and New Jersey.

Yet, this donor class has also faced its share of losses. In California’s 22nd Congressional District, voters turned out to support Randy Villegas to reject a candidates backed by Super Pacs linked to continuing support for the Netanyahu government of Israel and a last-minute intervention by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In Illinois’s 9^th Congressional District Democratic primary, Daniel Biss defeated Laura Fine who received millions of dollars in super PAC funding from similar groups linked to continuing U.S. military support for the Netanyahu government. Voters are turning out across the country to reject the influence of dark money in campaigns and rebuke what they view as a corrupt class of politicians who serve the narrow views of corporations and billionaires.

But this movement needs real structural reforms if it hopes to accomplish change.

Like Jackson, this year several House candidates from a wide range of states have challenged their opponents to join them in the people’s pledge, but in every case the opponents refused. The Arizona and New Mexico Democratic Parties have adopted resolutions opposing IEs in their nominations, but they have not yet implemented them. Finally, a list of significant national party donors is urging other donors and state parties to block IEs.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) adopted a resolution last August blocking IEs in the 2028 presidential nominating process. The task force on party reform is now charged with recommending implementation measures for consideration at the August DNC meeting.

Assuming the DNC moves forward and blocks IEs in the 2028 presidential primaries, it will take a renewed grassroots effort to mandate state Democratic parties and candidates at all levels of government follow suit. It will also require a renewed commitment to grassroots organizing and mobilization to overcome the IE still pouring into their Republican opponents’ campaigns.

The tidal wave in rural America against unregulated data center construction could be a huge catalyst. Tech companies and their billionaire owners are leading IE spending across the nation in the primaries, and they are ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the general election to prevent regulation of artificial intelligence and the data centers that fuel it.

It’s the rules, not just the rulers that need a lot more attention if voters are ever to count more than big money.

Larry CohenMore by this author →

Larry Cohen is a past president of the Communication Workers of America, was the founding board chair of Our Revolution and is a member of the Democartic National Committee, on which he has been working for 10 years on party reform.