Question 1 on Maine’s November 2024 ballot asked voters to limit the amount of dark money spent in state elections. (Photo by Emma Davis/ Maine Morning)
While Maine voters have overwhelmingly passed laws in the past two general elections to place stricter regulations on money in politics, those reforms have so far been blocked as legal battles play out in the courts.
Despite those obstacles, Maine lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and advocates are planning to introduce new reforms, or kickstart long-standing efforts, though there remains some disagreement on the best path forward for better regulating political spending.
“I think there’s a very clear, shared understanding of what the problem is and a willingness of Maine voters to try whatever might make a difference,” said Anna Kellar, executive director of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections. “I think that’s why we’re seeing these strong votes for these referendums.”
In November, a measure passed by nearly 75% to place a $5,000 limit on super PACs, which are independent political action committees that can currently raise and spend unlimited funds. But the law did not take effect when it was set to on Dec. 25.
That is because a political action committee tied to a Republican state lawmaker filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine challenging the legality of the limit, and the defendants in the case — Attorney General Aaron Frey and members of the Maine Ethics Commission — agreed to not enforce the law until May 30, to afford more time for the lawsuit to be resolved, according to a Dec. 20 order from a federal judge. Notably, a lawsuit was a part of the plan for this reform all along, as supporters hope the case eventually makes its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
For those closely following campaign finance in the state, this order felt like déjà vu.
In 2023, Maine voters passed a law to ban companies from spending money on referendum campaigns if they are partially owned by a foreign government or entity, with 86% of voters in favor. However, that law has also yet to take effect, as the same court blocked its enforcement until a final judgement is issued on lawsuits challenging the legality of the foreign spending restrictions.
The regulation community is in a wait-and-see posture regarding how these cases play out, with the latest likely to take years, said John Brautigam, legal counsel for Maine Citizens for Clean Elections and the broader Democracy Maine network. However, Brautigam clarified, “I don’t think anybody’s going to sit on their hands while they’re waiting for those cases to play out.”
During the legislative session, which began this month, Maine Citizens for Clean Elections and lawmakers are hoping to strengthen and expand the state’s clean elections system, require more transparency into who is spending in elections and overall try to amend how the U.S. Constitution regulates campaign finance — including possibly bypassing Congress.
Expanding clean elections
Maine was a pioneer in public campaign financing because of an opportunity citizens seized when the courts stymied other reform.
In 2000, Maine became one of two states to implement a clean elections model of campaign finance reform, marking the first time candidates for statewide offices in the U.S. were able to fully fund their campaigns with public money.
“Clean Elections itself was not the ideal reform,” Brautigam said, “but it was a result of what the courts left open to us after Buckley v. Valeo.”
That U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1976 established that there can’t be limitations on independent expenditures, meaning spending on political communication not done in coordination with a campaign or candidate. However, the decision allowed for public funding.
In 1996, a group of Maine residents gathered signatures to get the Maine Clean Elections Act on the ballot. The voluntary public financing program for political candidates passed with a wide margin and was first used in 2000 by candidates for the Maine Senate and House of Representatives. Portland was the first city in Maine to run a clean elections program in 2023, an effort headed by Maine Citizens for Clean Elections.
Kellar said they will continue to push to expand Maine’s clean elections program.
Last legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill to allow candidates for district attorney to also participate, but Gov. Janet Mills did not sign the proposal, or any of the bills the Legislature enacted when lawmakers reconvened for the final day of the session.
This session, a bipartisan group filed a bill to expand the program to candidates for district attorney, as well as sheriff. Kellar is also hoping for an expansion to candidates for county commissioner, a role that has seen increased attention in light of the decision-making regarding federal infrastructure and recovery funding.
One of the co-sponsors of that legislation, Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford), said he will also be filing a bill aimed at making the program more accessible to candidates and the public by streamlining cash and check contributions. This comes after a 2024 report from Maine Citizens for Clean Elections found that the program’s paperwork and requirements were at times a barrier to not only candidates participating but voters as well.
Kellar is also eyeing tweaks to make the gubernatorial program more attractive going into 2026, when Mills will be termed out. To cover these expansions and more broadly respond to rising costs, Kellar would like to see a slight increase to the state’s annual allocations to the program.
Reform opportunities within the current landscape
As the courts work through the various legal challenges, lawmakers and advocates are planning to take a stab at other electioneering restrictions.
Bennett, who chaired the ballot committee for the 2023 referendum and supported last year’s reform, said he plans to reintroduce a bill that died last session aimed at offering Mainers transparency regarding who spends money in elections. The bill is based on an Arizona law that has already been tested in and held up by the courts.
“It would require a PAC spending money in Maine elections, if they want to spend more than $5,000, they have to disclose all of their $5,000 donors,” Bennett said. “And if that isn’t the original source of funding, if say that $5,000 or more is from a 501c4 or another PAC, then those entities need to disclose all of their $5,000 donors all the way back up the food chain until you get to the original source of the money.”
Others are hoping for an expansion of another democratic reform, ranked-choice voting.
In 2016, Maine was the first state to adopt RCV. Under this system, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes in a race with more than two candidates, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and their votes get reassigned to whomever their voters ranked second. This process is repeated until one candidate wins a majority of votes.
Kellar hopes to extend RCV to general elections for the governor and Maine Legislature, which do not currently follow the system, as a 2017 advisory opinion from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court concluded doing so would be unconstitutional because the Maine Constitution requires those officials to be elected by a plurality of voters.
Democratic lawmakers tried to pass such an expansion last session, but the bill failed to garner the two-thirds support needed for a constitutional amendment.
Another possibility is a state Voting Rights Act, Kellar said with the caveat that such an ambition will need to be weighed against anticipated work opposing the Voter ID referendum likely to be on a future state ballot. That initiative seeks to require identification at the time of voting, in addition to when registering to vote. Other aspects of the proposal, including changes that would make absentee voting harder, have led Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to call it “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“I think a lot of our work is going to be trying to make sure that we can preserve all of the absentee voting systems and all of these things from that kind of attack,” Kellar said of the Voter ID effort, “but I think even in times where I feel like we have a lot of defensive work to do, trying to understand what’s going to be possible from the national landscape as well.”
Constitutional amendment
Lawmakers and advocates in Maine, and across the country, have been eyeing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would change the campaign finance landscape nationally.
American Promise, which was a national partner of the ballot campaign to pass Question 2, has been pushing for every state to adopt a version of its “For Our Freedom Amendment,” which would give states more authority to regulate campaign spending.
While not currently being enforced as the lawsuit is settled, the 2023 referendum would also require Maine’s congressional delegation to sponsor or co-sponsor an “anti-corruption” resolution in Congress, consistent with the Maine Legislature’s bipartisan call for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in April 2013 to “reaffirm the power of citizens through their government to regulate the raising and spending of money in elections.”
Such an amendment could undo the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which overturned century-old campaign finance restrictions by allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited funds on elections. Three of the four members of U.S. Congress from Maine are also in support of such an amendment, with Republican Sen. Susan Collins opposed.
“Corporations and the ultrarich have drowned out the voice of the American people, spending billions of dollars to elect candidates who would further line the pockets of big business,” U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree previously wrote in a statement to Maine Morning Star in support of the 2024 referendum. “The power should be in the hands of everyday voters, not corporations.”
While Kellar said most of the efforts of Maine Clean Elections, and the broader Democracy Maine network, are focused on what can be done on the state and local level, the organization is allied with efforts for a constitutional amendment.
However, there is disagreement among advocates and lawmakers on how to get such an amendment passed.
Last session, a group of bipartisan lawmakers — including Bennett and other proponents of campaign finance reforms, such as Taxation Committee chair Sen. Nicole Grohoski (D-Hancock) and now-State Treasurer Joe Perry — filed a joint resolution calling for constitutional conventions to consider such an amendment, as well as one to establish term limits for U.S. Congress.
Article V of the U.S. Constitution affords two ways amendments can be proposed, either with support of two-thirds of both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate or by “a convention for proposing amendments,” if backed by two-thirds of the states. An amendment would then need to be ratified by three-fourths of states, or state conventions.
However, so far, constitutional amendments have only been proposed by Congress.
Bennett said he and others will again push for Article V conventions on those topics, as well as term limits for justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. But others argue Article V conventions are dangerous.
While Kellar said their organization is aligned with Bennett on many of his proposed reforms, they are not on board with this method, arguing the lack of parameters for these conventions could result in rogue proposals that don’t have buy-in from the people.
“I do, though, really respect the fact that we are in such a frustrating stalemate around our Constitution and how difficult it is to amend it right now that I completely understand why the Article V approach is appealing,” Kellar added.
During two meetings of the Legislature’s Joint Rules Committee this session, Bennett proposed changing the two-thirds threshold to call for a convention instead to a simple majority, though a 3-7 vote of the committee indicated support for such a change is unlikely.
Given divided support for using Article V conventions and likely impasse in U.S. Congress, Kellar called a constitutional amendment a long shot, but still a possibility that shouldn’t be given up on.
“The historical lessons about what it takes sometimes to make constitutional amendments is that pretty much every time people thought, ‘There’s no way this is ever going to happen,’” Kellar said. “So, I do think we have to keep asking.”
Editor’s Note: Among those who filed lawsuits against the 2023 referendum were two media groups, the Maine Association of Broadcasters and the Maine Press Association. Maine Press Association represents about 50 newspapers and digital news outlets in the state, including Maine Morning Star.