Politics
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AUGUSTA, Maine — A Republican megadonor dumped $3 million into a massive effort to help lobbyist and former Maine Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason through a crowded gubernatorial primary.
The money came in February from Thomas Klingenstein, who is a partner in a New York investment firm and serves as the board chairman of the California-based Claremont Institute, a think tank that has placed many aides at the White House during President Donald Trump’s second term. Mason has done consulting work for Klingenstein in Maine.
Klingenstein’s donation, which was in campaign finance filings due to a state regulator on Saturday, has supercharged the most active outside group in the governor’s race. Mason has benefited from more than $2.4 million in ads that his campaign has not had to pay for.
That is less than half of the $5 million that group supporting him, a Maine offshoot of the national Restoration of America political committee, raised as of March’s end. It indicates that an even larger blitz could come soon in a seven-way primary that is mostly full of political outsiders.
Lawyer Bobby Charles has been the frontrunner in recent polls of the race despite spending almost nothing on ads to date. Only health tech entrepreneur Jonathan Bush has spent heavily on the air, although the $1.7 million spent by his campaign and an outside group supporting him falls well short of the pro-Mason total so far.
Klingenstein and Mason have been linked behind the scenes of Maine politics for a few years. The former lawmaker was consulting for the megadonor and his allies in 2022, when Klingenstein funded an ad blitz against Gov. Janet Mills that was targeted at LGBTQ books. She easily won her reelection race that year against former Gov. Paul LePage.
The pro-Mason group this year reported paying $15,000 to a company run by Keith Herrick, who runs a separate Augusta-based lobbying and public affairs firm with the candidate. Maine law prohibits coordination between candidates and groups that spend money to elect them.
The Bush-backing outside group, Maine Dream Inc., has gotten money from notable Democratic donors including Todd Park, who co-founded Athenahealth with the nephew of the late President George H.W. Bush. It has also gotten $250,000 from New Balance CEO James Davis, whose company has a large footprint with manufacturing in Maine.
Democratic gubernatorial candidates are also poised for outside help. Maine Conservation Voters announced a six-figure ad campaign last week for former House Speaker Hannah Pingree. A Maine offshoot of 314 Action, a group that works to elect scientists and has endorsed former public health chief Nirav Shah, also got $50,000 from a Pennsylvania donor.
Help also looks to be coming for former Senate President Troy Jackson, whose former chief of staff, Maxwell Rush, is running a group that reported two March contributions of $50,000 from trade unions that back Jackson’s primary run. No ad reservations have been made for that group, according to AdImpact.
Each of those three candidates has used “redboxing,” a contested strategy often used in big-money campaigns in which candidates create sections of their website giving instructions to outside backers on how to advertise on their behalf. The Campaign Legal Center has called it an “illegal strategy” that persists on the state and federal landscapes.
