Maine Democrats Don't Need More Crooks Like Lucas St. Clair And His Family Messing Up Politics

Jared Golden was endorsed by Maine's AFL-CIO today, not by rich friends of mommy

Today, Maine's AFL-CIO announced ttheir endorsement of Jared Golden in the Democratic primary. Speakers included Cynthia Phinney, Maine AFL-CIO President, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Ron Green of the Professional Fire Fighters of Maine, Patrick Carleton, a Chesterville papermaker and member of the United Steelworkers, and Julie Eaton, a Stonington lobsterman and member of the Machinists union-- and, of course Jared Golden, a veteran and member of working class who isn't cowed by rich snobs who inherit their parents' money.

Golden's opponent, Wall Street puppet Bruce Poliquin, a rubber stamp for Trump and Ryan, is one of the GOP's most vulnerable incumbents but before Golden can take him on, he has to get through a primary that includes a multimillionaire who's the heir to the Burt's Bees fortune, Lucas St. Clair. St. Clair's most recent e-mail starts by saying "You deserve a member of Congress who listens to you, not corporate special interests and the wealthy elite, not mentioning that special interests and the wealthy elite is precisely who is financing his campaign. In fact, Maine Public Radio had pointed out that he's not even in Congress yet and he's already cheating and breaking campaign finance laws in the same way rich Republicans do. "A new, secretive group appears to be attempting to tilt the three-way Democratic contest in favor of one of the candidates-- Lucas St. Clair," Public Radio explained this week.

St. Clair's campaign has said it has nothing to do with the TV spots blanketing the airwaves. But there are signs that the group behind the ads has close ties to St. Clair and his mother, Burt’s Bees Inc. co-founder Roxanne Quimby.

Campaign ads that make a case for a candidate are paid for by the their campaigns, and if you want to see who's funding those campaigns, you can.

But that's not the case with a new group called the Maine Outdoor Alliance, a nonprofit organization that sprung up in late March. The group is now running ads about saving the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument from the Trump administration-- an issue that has been largely settled since December, when Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the monument is likely safe from changes by the federal government.

Nonetheless, the ads provide a number to call Zinke, so viewers can tell him to leave the monument alone. The number goes to the general number for the Department of Interior-- a bureaucracy of over 70,000 employees.

But contacting Zinke probably is not the main purpose of the ads. They focus heavily on the congressional candidate who is often credited with making the national monument a reality.

Testimonials like that are pretty standard in candidate ads, and they would make perfect sense in a campaign spot for St. Clair, one of three Democrats in the primary for the 2nd Congressional District seat.

But the Maine Outdoor Alliance does not explicitly say in the ad that it supports St. Clair's candidacy. It is incorporated as a nonprofit and its ads are classified by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as issue based-- a pair of designations increasingly used by so-called ‘dark money groups’ that attempt to influence voters, but whose donors can remain secret.

Dan Corcoran, a forester who appears in one of the ads, said he cannot remember the names of the people from Maine Outdoor Alliance who contacted him.

"It was not my understanding that it was a campaign ad,” Corcoran said. “It was to identify and build support for the national monument.”

Corcoran also said that he is not entirely sure who Maine Outdoor Alliance is, which puts him in the same position as the rest of the public.

So far, the Maine Outdoor Alliance isn't responding to requests for comment.

But publicly available information offers some clues about who is running the organization. According to articles of incorporation papers filed with the Secretary of State, Nathan Deyesso is the incorporator for Maine Outdoor Alliance.

Deyesso runs a business in Scarborough and, according to a 2008 copy of Gould Academy's alumni magazine, he was St. Clair's best man at his wedding.

Deyesso did not respond to requests for comment.

Nor did Barrett Kaiser, a Montana-based political consultant linked to the agency that FCC documents show purchased the Maine Outdoor Alliance ads. Kaiser was hired by Burt’s Bees Inc. co-founder Roxanne Quimby to lead the monument campaign.

Quimby is St. Clair's mother. She did not respond to requests for comment.

"You know, I don't think there's any question that the people who are doing this are supporters of Lucas and the effort he put it in to creating the national monument," said David Farmer, a spokesperson for St. Clair’s campaign.

"We don't know who's doing this," he said.

Farmer said the campaign is not affiliated with the Maine Outdoor Alliance.

"We have not talked with them, we have not coordinated with them in any way. And we were unaware of the ads until we saw it like everyone else," Farmer said.

Farmer also said that these kinds of ads are the reality of the campaign finance laws that many Democratic candidates say are broken. Among them is St. Clair, who addressed the explosion of spending and dark money groups during a candidate forum held in January.

"You know I think that Citizens United and money in politics has been the ultimate corruption of our democracy in our lifetime," he said.

Farmer was asked if St. Clair planned to denounce the dark money ads running on his behalf.

"Yeah, we would prefer that it be a straight contest," Farmer said.

It does not look like Maine Outdoor Alliance will let that happen, though. The group just increased its television ad buy to over $300,000 for the first half of May.

Golden has taken this lying down. His campaign issued a statement: "There is a problem in this Democratic Primary. And that problem is easy to define: Secretive donors are spending unlimited amounts of money to influence this election.Last week, a mysterious Portland-based organization, the Maine Outdoor Alliance, spent more than $300,000 dollars to run television and digital ads. The source of their money is unknown, their donors are secret, but their intentions are clear. They want to buy this nomination for my opponent, Lucas St. Clair. As we enter the final month of this primary race, I expect to see more of this type of money enter this race. However, I’m holding our campaign to a higher standard-- I’m not taking any of it.

"The Maine Outdoor Alliance was clearly created to buy influence in this primary, and to do so without any accountability. But here’s the real problem. Lucas St. Clair’s campaign has said, and I quote: 'We don’t know who’s doing this.' That simple statement doesn’t pass the straight face test… As you’ve seen and heard reported by the Bangor Daily News and Maine Public Broadcasting, the Maine Outdoor Alliance is run by the best man from Lucas’s wedding. And the political consultant who helped procure these television ads has a long history of working with Lucas St. Clair and his family.

"I am calling on all Democrats in Maine, and across the country. Put your cards on the table, reveal all of your donors, and reject shady outside organizations like the Maine Outdoor Alliance who hide information on who’s trying to buy elections from voters. This is how Democrats bring about real change: by holding ourselves and our own campaign finance practices accountable to the higher standards that we are fighting for. Because here’s the bottom line-- and it’s an important lesson I learned in the Marines. As leaders, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. Just because we can do something, doesn’t make it right."

If you'd like to help Jared combat St. Clair and his friends and family from stealing the nomination, please consider clicking on the Blue America congressional thermometer on the right and chipping in what you can. Poliquin will make mincemeat of someone like St. Clair. This is a seat the Democrats can take back... as long as they have the right Democrat running.

Aside From Nancy Pelosi, Who Thinks Congress Needs More Clueless Multimillionaires Buying House Seats?

I'm afraid that if Pelosi stays on as House Democratic Leader for another decade-- she'd only be 87, barely older than DiFi when she starts her next 6-year Senate term-- there will be no Democratic members of Congress who aren't multimillionaires. Pelosi's net worth is around $192 million. She likes-- and encourages-- candidates like what she sees in the mirror to run as Democrats. There are at least 5 Democrats in the House in that same super-duper-rich category-- Jared Polis (New Dem-CO- $476 million), John Delaney (New Dem-MD- $369 million), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA- $118.3 million), Suzan DelBene (New Dem-WA- $97.3 million), and Don Beyer (New Dem-VA- $79.8 million). Will you look at that! A bunch of conservatives from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- at least when it comes to economic issues. Multimillionaires tend to be that way. All these sickening New Dems who play footsie with the Republicans and the same corrupting elements who fund the Republicans.

But it's the crappy candidates Pelosi has the DCCC recruiting that get me going. I never saw so many multimillionaires running as I have this year. I want to throw up. See the nice "I'm Running!" video up top-- like from an undergraduate communications class? That was released yesterday by Sara Jacobs, the self-entitled heiress to the Qualcomm fortune. And there's already a completely pointless multimillionaire in that race, Paul Kerr, a crony of one of California's worst (and richest) members, Scott Peters, who persuaded him to run. This is a district where the incredible grassroots work by Doug Applegate and his team last year exposed how weak Darrell Issa is-- and nearly beat him. The final vote wasn't declared 'til January-- last in the nation-- and Issa squeaked through 155,888 (50.3%) to 154,267 (49.7%). So Applegate announced he would finish what he started in 2016. But a vile gaggle of predatory super-rich scumbags, like Peters, started telling their friends it would be easy to roll over Applegate and then let the wave sweep them to victory against Issa with no real effort. Worst of all is Pelosi crony Ira Lechner, a failed Virginia political hack who persuaded one of his pals, Mike Levin-- who never lifted a finger against Issa previously-- to jump in, promising him that a thuggish political operative in Pasasda, Park Skelton, could "deliver" Pelosi and force Applegate out of the race. None of these people were in the Marines and don't understand that you don't "roll over" or "force" a Marine colonel, which is what today's frontrunner, Doug Applegate, is. So now, you have a totally spoiled heiress-- another one who has absolutely nothing to do with the district and still lives in Brooklyn with a bunch of hipsters-- jumping in too. Consultants are getting incredibly rich over the Southern California cash cows they milking for all they're worth.

The plague of Pelosi's ridiculous multimillionaire menagerie gets worse as you travel around Orange County. After recruiting several shady characters to run against Dana Rohrabacher, the DCCC decided their favorite is Hans Keirstead, an immensely wealthy Canadian stem cell businessman with no knowledge of politics or anything else beyond how grateful the residents of coastal Orange County should be that he's decided to represent him. He looks good on paper, but completely flopped as a candidate. Other than the people on his payroll, no one likes him at all. But the DCCC had already chased a bunch of multimillionaires who live in the district out to run in other districts. The silliest one of all is Gil Cisneros, the "ex"-Republican Frito-Lay's potato-chip taster who won $266 million in a lottery and has been bribing lowlife Democrats in Congress to endorse him. Does that ever reek of Pelosi! So here's a guy living in a $10 million dollar beachfront mansion in Rohrabacher's district-- with all Republican instincts-- who the DCCC persuaded to run in Ed Royce's district. They also talked a wealthy doctor, Mai-Khanh Tran, also a CA-48 resident, to run in CA-39 too. That one was hilarious because one of the DCCC brain surgeons figured she would do well because CA-39 has lots of Asians, not understanding that Dr. Tran is Vietnamese and that the whole Vietnamese community lives in CA-48, not CA-39, which is heavily Chinese. And then there's another very wealthy guy-- who plunked down $2 million on the day he jumped into the race-- Andy Thornburn, who also lives in CA-48 but is running in CA-39. At least he's an independent operator and not part of the Pelosi/DCCC posse.

As though this wasn't funny enough, some super-rich attorney, Omar Siddiqui actually does live in CA-39... but he's not running there. A self-described "Reagan Democrat," he says he admires CA-39 incumbent, Republican Ed Royce (a far right bigot) too much to run against him so he went in the opposite direction and is running against Rohrabacher instead. Rohrabacher, though doesn't just have the clueless Keirstead, who was, of course, endorsed by the New Dems, trying to win the Democratic nomination to take him on. He also has to contend with a Keirstead type, but with a bit of personality to make of for Hans' total lack of any, Harley Rouda, another multimillionaire (and ex-Republican), also endorsed by the New Dems. Sounds like a circus, right? Good news in that district-- and easy to remember: vote for the woman. Laura Oatman, a middle class architect who's actually from the district, is a long-time activist and an actual progressive.

OK, I'm exhausted now, and you must be too. So I won't go through every damn district from coast to coast where Pelosi and her minions are recruiting these abominable multimillionaire zombies. But let me leave you with just one more clean across the country-- in Maine, but not in the richie-rich southeast coastal Maine district (Portland) but in the totally blue collar part of Maine where the last thing the folks want is some phony baloney rich kid who's mommy, Roxanne Quimby from Burt's Bees, wants him to run because... well, just because. And this guy, Lucas St. Clair, is tight with the Maine donor elite headed by Pelosi-super-donor hedge fund billionaire and slum lord Donald Sussman, former husband of Congresswoman Chellie Pingree. The folks in ME-02 hate nothing more than being told how to live their lives by the rich folks in Portland. And there's a solid blue collar candidate in the race too, Maine House Majority Whip Jared Golden, a Marine Vet and and an "of the people" kind of guy, who St Clair hopes to bury under a flood of Burt's Bees and Maine Donor Table money. The only chance Bruce Poliquin, the Republican incumbent, has of being reelected would be if Pelosi can somehow get St. Clair the nomination. But even the DCCC now realizes she's flipped her lid and is trying to keep her from screwing up a good thing in Maine.