Follow the Money: How Campaign Cash Flows Through Augusta
An examination of the campaign cash raised and spent by state party committees and caucus committees.
Believe it or not, the Maine Clean Elections Act (also known as welfare for politicians) did not succeed in cleaning up Maine politics or eliminating the need for fundraising and private money. Since Maine decided to take money from working people and give it to politicians for their campaigns, the amount of outside money flowing into politics has only increased, and, as anyone can attest, politics has only become nastier.
Under Maine’s campaign finance laws, all money contributed to and spent by political committees must be reported to the Maine Ethics Commission. In this article, we’ll parse the campaign finance data and try to make sense of it. For the purposes of this analysis, we’ll examine three committees on the Democratic side and three on the Republican side, each representing the state committee, the House caucus, and the Senate caucus. Although outside political action committees and interest groups spend a considerable amount of money in Maine’s elections, the spending by the caucus and state committees provides insight into how partisan mechanisms function, who’s making money from politics, and who’s footing the bill.
The largest and most visible fundraising and campaigning arms for the Republicans and Democrats are the state committees, namely the Maine Democratic State Committee/Maine Democratic Party and the Maine Republican Party, both registered as political party committees. Alongside these committees, the Democrats have the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, and the Republicans have the Maine Senate Republicans committee. On the House side, the committees are the House Democratic Campaign Committee and The House Republican Fund.
Caucus funds are of particular interest in Maine politics because they are controlled and represented by legislative leaders. Although both Republicans and Democrats maintain similar committees, our review of campaign finance records reveals significant differences in how each party manages its money. Democrats tend to centralize spending and decision-making at the state party level, while Republican committees prefer to spend independently.
On both the House and Senate sides, the largest recipient of caucus funds for Democrats in any given year is typically the state party committee. In contrast, from 2022 through July 2025, Republican legislative leaders generally favored directing funds through their own independent spending strategies.
For the purposes of this post, we’ll focus on the top contributors, in dollar terms, to the six political committees in question, as well as their major expenditures. In this review, our analysis includes campaign filings submitted from January 1, 2022, to the present.
First, we’ll examine who’s providing all the money.
Maine Senate Republicans vs Senate Democratic Campaign Committee
On the Senate side, the Democrats massively out raised Republicans from 2023 to the midyear point of 2025. All told, the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee raised more than $2.5 million, while the Maine Senate Republicans raised almost $1.4 million. Almost all of the Senate Republican fundraising came from other committees, while the Senate Democrats found a generous sugar daddy in Stephen King.
Senate GOP Top Contributors
Republican State Leadership Committee — $600,000
Maine Senate Republican Majority — $291,645
Grover Gaming, Inc. — $55,000
On the Road to Maine's Future — $35,000
Still Fed Up With Taxes — $20,000
Senate Dems Top Contributors
Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee — $896,000
The PAC for America's Future - ME — $350,000
Stephen E King — $285,000
Mattie for Maine — $182,800
Justin L Alfond — $115,500
House Republican Fund vs House Democratic Campaign Committee
On the House side, Democrats once again out raised Republicans, $2.8 million to $1.1 million, with the largest donor to each being a political action committee from Washington, D.C. While the House Dems benefitted from donations from wealthy Maine Democrats, the House Republicans received top contributions from Grover Gaming, a slot machine designer, and Charter Communications, the trade name for Spectrum.
House Dems
The PAC for America's Future — $300,000
Stephen King — $285,000
Dirigo Leadership PAC — $155,000
Sara Gideon — $150,000
Justin Alfond — $115,000
House GOP
Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) — $475,000
The Concord Fund — $100,000
Grover Gaming Inc. — $55,000
Charter Communications — $24,000
Maine Truck PAC — $22,500
Maine Republican Party vs the Maine Democratic State Committee
The differences between Democratic and Republican money flows becomes more apparent when you look at the contributions to the state party committees. The starkest difference is that the Senate and House campaign committees on the Democrat side pool almost all of their donations into the state committee, while the Republican legislative committees give a smaller amount to the state committee and spend far more on campaign services and vendors. The Maine GOP is also significantly dependent on a single entity — the Republican Governors Association. All told, the Maine Dems raised $9.6 million from Jan. 1, 2022 to July 2025, while the Maine Republicans raised $8.8 million. (Keep in mind, those totals double count some of the contributions listed earlier because of committee-to-committee transfers.)
Maine Democratic Party
Senate Democratic Campaign Committee — $5,091,000
House Democratic Campaign Committee — $2,063,000
Democratic Governors' Association - Maine — $204,912
House Legislative Campaign Fund — $200,000
Jay Robert Pritzker — $150,000
Stephen E. King — $120,000
NEA Fund for Children & Public Education — $100,000
Justin L. Alfond — $90,250
Nishad Singh — $90,000
Eric Schmidt — $78,450
Senate Democrats Special Election Fund 2021 — $68,000
Robert C.S. Monks — $65,000
Barbara Fish Lee — $50,000
Daniel R. Tishman — $50,000
AFSCME — $50,000
Roxanne Quimby — $40,000
STAC Labs Inc — $38,805
Baldacci Alfond Golf PAC — $35,133
Alex Kasser — $35,000
Daniel R Tishman — $31,708
Maine Republican Party
Republican Governors Association — $6,277,000
Maine Senate Republican Majority — $611,700
Republican State Leadership Committee — $300,000
Itemized Small Donors — $129,995
House Republican Fund — $118,676
Maine Senate Republican Majority PAC — $104,800
John Malone — $100,000
Thomas Klingenstein — $100,000
Maine Values PAC — $77,500
Linda Bean — $75,750
Joseph D. Doyle Jr. — $50,000
Diana Bean — $50,000
First National Investments LLC — $50,000
Maine Republican Party — $38,000
Headlight Audio Visual, Inc. — $35,775
Sandra Bahre — $30,000
Presque Isle Republican Committee — $29,000
Gary Bahre — $25,000
Diana B. Bean — $25,000
Women’s Leadership Fund — $25,000
Expenditures
Money itself doesn’t win elections. It has to be translated into political influence through staff, consultants, ad buys, and other tools of influence. In this section, we’ll look at how each of the committees spends money, and the differences between how the political parties operate will really become apparent. In terms of methodology, we’re using the expenditure data from the Maine Ethics website the period between Jan 1, 2022 and July 2025. We’re keeping the committee-to-committee transfers in the top ten lists, even though they’re reflected in the contribution lists above, to show context for how the caucus funds distribute cash.
Senate Democrats
Maine Democratic Party — $3,896,000 (This is the Title 13-B nonprofit entity for the Maine Democratic Party’s federal activity.)
Maine Democratic State Committee — $1,195,000
Lincoln Park Strategies — $400,230
Hayley Rumback Political Consulting LLC — $56,587
JVA Campaigns — $51,486
Bernstein Shur Sawyer Nelson — $33,922
NGP VAN — $28,894
Paragon Payment Solutions — $20,194
Elias Law Group — $17,147
Airbnb — $13,521
House Democrats
Maine Democratic State Committee — $2,263,000
Payroll Management, Inc. — $275,405
Sean Smith — $34,085
Bernstein Shur — $33,294
Lincoln Park Strategies — $28,000
Portland Harbor Hotel — $22,891
Democrats Serve — $14,000
NGP VAN Inc. — $13,593
Zoom — $13,516
Alex Coppola — $12,228
Maine Democratic State Committee
Maine Democratic Party — $1,139,885
Paychex, Inc — $497,472
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield — $247,039
Gusto Inc — $224,411
Sean Christopher Smith — $214,027
Brian Colleran — $170,003
Amy Bouchard — $152,593
William Parmacek — $119,836
Lillian Hermann — $118,389
Daniel Lord — $110,982
Maine House Republican Fund
Patriot Consulting Group — $232,491
Maine Republican Party — $119,427
Rudman Winchell — $33,200
Framework Fundraising — $32,810
Faulkinghammer PAC — $20,000
Percipient Strategies LLC — $10,000
DTC Messaging — $8,913
Nonesuch River Golf Club — $8,410
7-Figure Fundraising, LLC — $7,500
Women’s Leadership Fund — $5,500
Maine Senate Republicans
Patriot Consulting — $190,065
Maine Republican Party — $109,800
Opinion Diagnostics — $25,200
Framework Fundraising — $20,000
Rudman Winchell — $18,766
Percipient Strategies LLC — $10,000
Lorrie Tourtlelotte — $10,000
Dunegrass Golf Club — $8,514
Seavey Consulting — $5,000
American Airlines — $3,779
Maine Republican Party
ADP — $282,900
Littlefield Consulting, LLC — $148,531
LaRochelle Fundraising Solutions — $121,454
Maine Republican Party (self-transfer) — $112,514
City of Augusta — $92,589
SRCP Media — $90,328
Apex Strategies, LLC — $89,000
Joel Stetkis — $73,572
Michelle Dale — $61,105
Targeted Victory LLC — $51,000
Much of Maine’s political spending is not captured in this analysis. However, by examining legislative and party committee organizations, you can get a sense of how money flows through funds controlled and represented by party leaders on both the left and right — in terms of both who is footing the bill and who is getting paid.
You can also see distinct differences in how these committees operate: in the case of the Maine Democrats, they tend to work collaboratively, whereas the Maine Republicans tend to operate independently.
In a future post, we’ll examine ballot question committees and some of the major political action committees. But as an additional data point to illustrate broader political spending trends, here are the top 10 recipients of all reported political spending from 2022 through July 2025 (excluding expenditures reported as transfers to other committees).
Left Hook — $10,352,170
Great American Media — $7,578,471
SRCP Media, Inc. — $7,416,799
Del Cielo Media LLC — $6,247,339
Second Street Associates — $5,491,979
AL Media LLC — $3,803,338
SRCP Media Inc — $2,303,598.00
Frame Media Strategies LLC — $2,219,252
FP1 Strategies — $1,749,245
JVA Campaigns — $1,675,011
Global Strategy Group — $1,185,140
If you’d like us to include a certain campaign finance analysis in a future post, send us an email: robinsonreport@substack.com. Also, see our earlier Follow the Money report on reported lobbyist billing at the State House.
Follow the Money: Who are the top lobbyists in Augusta?
Here’s a look at the public reporting for 2024–2025 on lobbying compensation, the top lobbied issues, and which firms and lobbyists are wielding power in Augusta.