Recently several have noted that Republican gubernatorial candidate Les Otten has given donations to a variety of Democrats, including Chellie Pingree, Adam Cote, and Mike Michaud, among others. We began to wonder if he was the only one, or if other Blaine House hopefuls had bipartisan wallets.
Since this whole issue began in the GOP, we’ve decided to take a look at Republicans first. We used OpenSecrets, which provides the database of federal campaign contributions, and the Maine Ethics Commission website, which has a database of state-level contributions. We broke it down by how much each candidate gave to members of each party and to various organizations, as you can see below. Note we excluded donations to one’s own campaign for this exercise.
It was immediately apparent that Otten was by far the most generous of the declared Republican gubernatorial candidates. Although it is true that he has given over $10,000 to Democrats over the years, that is less than 20% of his total donations. He’s given almost $32,000 to Republicans, well more than all the other candidates’ political donations put together. In total over the years Otten has given around $54,000.
Senator Peter Mills was the next most generous, giving over $10,000 to a variety of local candidates over the years. (Should you delve into the database yourself, it is important to note that there are two Peter Mills in OpenSecrets; ours is the one with the Skowhegan, rather than Farmington, address). Mills’ organizational donations include Planned Parenthood, conservation groups, centrist Republican groups, and a variety of fiscally conservative groups.
After Mills, Bruce Poliquin clocks in next, close behind. Almost half of his $8,500 in contributions were from this year, but he also gave to Jim Longley, Jr. and other Republican candidates. He has never given to any Democrats.
Besides Otten, Jacobson was also intrigued by Democrat Adam Cote during last year’s 1st district congressional primary. In 2008 Matt Jacobson gave Cote $1,000, another $1,000 to Susan Collins, and $100 to the Portland Chamber of Commerce‘s PAC – which appears to be all of his contributions. Paul LePage has given almost the same amount, a little over $1,900 total – all to Republican candidates (including $800 to Susan Collins) or fiscally conservative organizations and ballot question committees.
It is interesting that Otten was the only one of the GOP candidates to have given money to President George W. Bush, and none of them gave any money to Senator John McCain. Mills gave money to Rudy Guiliani during the primaries, but did not fiscally support any other GOP presidential contenders.
Martin Vachon is not recorded as having made contributions in either system.
Note that neither of these sites is totally complete or perfect, especially the state Ethics website, which has no information on donations before it was created. There are also a whole variety of political organizations which focus on policy, not candidates, and are therefore not covered by the various reporting requirements (like the Maine Heritage Policy Center, for example). Finally, there are unique entities, like the national convention committees, presidential libraries, and presidential transition foundations which are not governed by the same reporting requirements, if any at all.
Still, these sites are very extensive and give a good picture of one’s donations to campaigns, PAC’s, state parties, and ballot question committees.
