Under Maine's Clean Election law, a candidate who chooses to run with public financing for a House seat must first collect $5 donations from 60 individuals to be eligible. After doing so, they can then only spend a limited amount of state matching funds for their campaign. Senate candidates must collect at least 175 qualifying donations. But the current law doesn't prohibit the candidates from also running a political action committee or prohibit another PAC from spending on their behalf.
So a number of new bills aimed at cleaning up Maine's Clean Election finance law holds the potential to rankle political leaders on both sides of the aisle.
State Rep. Justin Chenette, D-Saco, said he knows leadership is displeased with his efforts to stop candidates who are seeking state office from also mangling political action committees, called "leadership PACs", that can filter money back to a political party, which in turn can use it to support a candidate or oppose a rival. According to Chenette and others, the practice creates a virtual black hole in Maine's campaign finance law, allowing candidates the cover of their party when attacking opponents.
Chenette, along with a bipartisan group of other lawmakers, are pushing a variety of bills to end the practice, noting it not only makes it difficult for the public to trace campaign spending, but that it is, at its roots, unethical.
A check of state campaign finance records for the 2014 election shows that the current and former state Senate president, one a Democrat and one a Republican, operated leadership PACs. Also collecting PAC donations was the current Speaker of the House, as well as the House majority and minority leaders and their assistants.
In all, 29 candidates ran leadership PACS in 2014, and 14 of those also accepted public funding for their campaigns as Clean Election candidates. Twenty-six of the PACs are still active, according to records from the state's Ethics Commission.
Collectively, the PACs raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, with donations coming from business interests ranging from beer-maker Anheuser-Busch to Wal-Mmart, from drug-maker Pfizer to Bangor Savings Bank and General Motors.
Many of the PACs took money from other PACs, and many also made donations to other PACs or back to their respective party's generic PAC.
Chenette and others are saying they won't support a ballot question that's expected to go before voters this year to increase the amount of public funding available to Clean Election candidates if the Legislature doesn't change the laws around PACs.
Also before lawmakers is a bill sponsored by state Rep. Heather Sirocki, R-Scarborough, that would only allow first-time candidates to be eligible for public funding. Sirocki said after a candidate runs one time, they have enough name recognition to raise private funds for their campaigns.
State Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, said he, too, supports reforming the Clean Election system and has a bill that would put a competing question on the ballot that would ask voters to do away with Maine's Clean Election system.
Brakey said, so far, taxpayers have paid over $25 million supporting Clean Election candidates since the system was put in place in 2000.
It is time this dual Campaign Finance system is stopped.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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