Category Archives: Politics

Maine marijuana and tax campaigns load up on cash

The campaigns to legalize marijuana and fund education spending with a new tax on the state’s highest earners came close to doubling their already substantial campaign coffers in September. Campaign disclosures filed Wednesday night show that groups supporting both ballot questions in September raised about 40 percent of what they’d raised prior to that month, both from two large donors. […]

Where Maine ballot question campaigns are getting their money

This year’s ballot questions in Maine are a primary attraction for political fundraising, with high-stakes fights on five different policy questions, including marijuana legalization and expanded background checks on gun sales. On Wednesday, groups spending to support or oppose those questions filed detailed financial disclosures through September, revealing where they got their money, though much of it remains hard […]

See where Maine donors gave the most to Trump, Clinton

With only six weeks left before voters hit the polls and pick the next president, patterns in campaign donations are making clearer the landscape of big support on each side of the aisle from Maine donors. What’s clear from overall donations is that most itemized donations to the presidential race went to Democrats. (Campaigns are required to list names and ZIP codes […]

Magazines like to rank Maine’s economy. Put their lists dead last this election season.

As we enter election season, political parties will again ready their claims about what’s up and what’s down in the economy and why that should cause voters to fill in Bubble A or Bubble B (or, in certain markets, Bubble C). Those, of course, are arguments dressed as descriptions, based on a whole bunch of funky assumptions. On Monday, the magazine Governing ranked […]

Measuring the toll hybrid cars take on Maine roads

Gov. Paul LePage this week added Maine to a growing number of states that have passed or considered special fees on hybrid and electric vehicles. LePage and officials in other states raised concerns that high-efficiency or electric vehicles are not paying their fair share of road maintenance costs, which are funded largely through state and federal taxes on gasoline. The governor did not […]