Liberal groups and some lawmakers in Maine are upset with Gov. Janet Mills after she vetoed a bill that would prohibit companies with more than 5 percent foreign ownership from spending money to influence political campaigns in the state.
In her veto message, Mills said she blocked the bill because it contained several provisions that would have limited Freedom of Speech, imposed an undue burden on media outlets, and hampered businesses majority owned by Mainers.
Mills also noted a glaring loophole in the law: “the same business that is barred from influencing the electorate as they consider a statute at referendum may retain a paid lobbyist to influence legislators as they consider enacting a statute…”
Although the bill would not have taken effect in time to affect this fall’s ballot referenda elections, it was introduced in response to Canadian and Spanish corporations spending money to oppose a ballot initiative that would prompt the state to seize Central Maine Power and Versant, Maine’s two largest electrical utilities.
Central Maine Power is owned by Avangrid, a Spanish company, while Versant is owned by ENMAX Corp, which is based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
In November, Maine voters will decide whether to approve a ballot initiative that would ask the state to come up with a plan to seize the Maine-based assets of the two companies via a forced sale.
Although the details of how that acquisition would unfold have not been settled, the outcome would almost certainly involve state taxpayers taking on more than $13 billion in debt in exchange for those assets.
Both companies have already spent large sums of money opposing the state seizure of their Maine-based assets.
Since both companies oppose the forced-sale, a victory for the “yes” campaign would also likely result in a protracted legal battle, with Maine taxpayers shouldering the burden of defending the asset seizure.
But the hew and cry over foreign spending influencing Maine politics appears to be selective and driven by partisanship. While supporters of the proposed law have focused on foreign for-profit corporations’ political spending opposing a left-wing agenda, less has been said of the subtler ways foreign money influences Maine politics, often in support of that agenda.
At the same time left-of-center lawmakers and far left advocacy groups have bemoaned the influence of foreign businesses on Maine’s political campaigns, several of Maine’s most prominent left-wing advocacy groups, including groups that support the forced-sale of CMP and Versant, are the beneficiaries of Arabella Advisors, a Democrat-aligned firm whose funds have received money from Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss.
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Arabella Advisors is a private consulting firm that manages several large funds of money that are allowed to accept anonymous donations.
Arabella then distributes those funds to left-wing interest groups that influence local, state, and national politics.
The structure of the organizations, in some cases, obfuscates and obscures who is really financing political organizations.
In Maine, Arabella-aligned funds have supported the Maine People’s Alliance and its sister organization, Maine People’s Resource Center, along with the Maine Center for Economic Policy, Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, Maine Equal Justice, and Maine Initiatives.
Ann Kellar, the executive director of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, testified in support of the bill to ban foreign influence campaigns at its committee hearing in May.
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“Foreign governments and foreign government controlled entities have the resources and the wherewithal to distort our political discourse,” said Kellar.
“Their interests and loyalties are to their foreign owners and multinational markets, not to Maine people,” she said.
Maine Citizens for Clean Elections is among the groups that have received large amounts of money from Arabella-controlled organizations in recent years, and at least some of that money came from Wyss, a Swiss foreign national.
That a Swiss foreign national is funding progressive activism in Maine is only known as the result of Associated Press reporting on documents related to Wyss’s Berger Action Fund.
According to the Associated Press report, Wyss contributed as much as $72 million to influence American politics in 2021.
Given the nature of Arabella’s structure and the permissibility of anonymous giving, the true extent of foreign influence flowing through Arabella and into left-wing advocacy groups in Maine is unknown.
Because that money flows to 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 nonprofit groups, rather than campaign committees regulated by the Maine Ethics Commission, the groups are not required to disclose who is funding their advocacy.
