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Political front-groups of both parties are tooling up for a bruising U.S. Senate election in Maine next year, which will be critical in determining the partisan majority in the upper chamber come 2021.
And deep-pocketed political donors are already stepping up to fund the effort.
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A new Republican super PAC called 1820 PAC is designed to sound like a local affair—1820 was the year that Maine was founded—but its donors, all but one of whom have given five- and six-figure sums, all hail from out of state, according to a filing this week with the Federal Election Commission.
The group’s top donor in the second quarter of the year was Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of investment giant Blackstone. Schwarzman donated $500,000 to 1820 in May, two months after maxing out to Collins’ campaign. Schwarzman has also donated millions of dollars to the Senate Leadership Fund, Republicans’ top Senate super PAC.
Other top donors to 1820 have also helped finance SLF, sister super PAC American Crossroads, and Republican Senate candidates themselves, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). They include Dallas real estate investor Harlan Crow, who gave $25,000 to 1820; retired chemical executive Robert Burt, who donated $100,000; and investor Howard Leach, who chipped in another $100,000.
On the other side of the Maine front-group fight is a super PAC called Main Voters. It’s dropped $15,000 on digital ads attacking Collins so far this year. And while it hasn’t yet disclosed any donors this year, its top contributor last cycle was Donald Sussman, an investor who has poured millions into Senate Majority PAC, Democrats’ SLF counterpart.
Main Voters is running Facebook ads on a page called Stop Collins, and a corresponding website of the same name. Domain registration data shows the website was created by Amy Pritchard, a prominent Democratic digital strategist.
In years past, when Collins wasn’t up for reelection, Main Voters was far more sanguine about her Senate record. A page on the group’s website says Collins and Independent Maine Senator Angus King have both “earned reputations as truly nonpartisan pragmatists who always put the needs of Mainers above party politics.”
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