Monthly Archives: November 2016

Traders are putting money on Maine’s elections. They think legal pot and a higher minimum wage will pass.

Supporters of legalizing marijuana and raising Maine’s minimum wage have raised at least $5 million seeking to influence the election, with lots of money riding on the outcomes. But there’s another group of people with a stake in how Maine voters decide the two questions: prediction traders. And they think both questions are set to […]

Welcome to my nightmare: Unraveling the mess of donors to Maine’s referendum campaigns

It was a waking nightmare Halloween weekend. At the grisly hour of midnight Friday, ballot question groups and others filed terrifyingly dark election finance reports. I KNOW.  The reports really were dark — as dark as they’d ever been. Nonprofit “dark money” groups who are not required to disclose their donors continued to give most of the cash coming into the registered campaigns. And […]

Most 2014 business tax filers in Maine made less than $200,000

Question 2 would affect plenty of high earners who run small businesses, which has been a concern of opposition groups. But most small business owners earn too little to get hit with the tax hike, according to the latest federal tax data for Maine. Business owners can “pass-through” business income to be taxed on their personal […]