More than $600,000 has been poured into the effort to sway voters one way or the other regarding Question 2 on the November ballot, but the vast majority of it has been donated and spent by those pushing for the question’s passage.
Advocacy of Question 2, which asks voters whether they approve a casino being built in western Maine – in the town of Oxford, it was announced last week – was taken over in mid-September by Olympia Gaming Maine LLC of Las Vegas, Nev. More than $500,000 has been spent by Olympia thus far. Comparing that number with the expenditures of CasinosNo! the group rallying against Question 2, is a study in vast contracts.
CasinosNo! brought in $77,700 during the quarterly reporting period that ended Sept. 30, almost all of it from private donors.
Leon and Lisa Gorman of Yarmouth were the campaign’s most generous donors, giving $40,000 in two installments. Leon Gorman is the grandson of Leon Leonwood Bean, the founder of L.L. Bean in Freeport. Gorman served as the company’s president from 1967 until his retirement in 2001.
John T. Gorman, also of Yarmouth, donated $25,000 on Sept. 24. Other donors in this reporting period included Lebel & Harriman, a financial services firm located in Falmouth, $2,500; Merton G. Henry of Scarborough, $200; and Richard W. Kurtz of Cape Elizabeth, $10,000. Since the beginning of the year, CasinosNo! has raised a total of $85,059.
On the expenditure side, CasinosNo! spent $31,358 during the reporting period, leaving itself with $47,379.83 as of Sept. 30 to fund the rest of the campaign.. The majority of that spending – $18,283.24 – went to Savvy, Inc. of Portland, which is owned by Dennis Bailey, the primary spokesman for CasinosNo! The organization also paid $13,000 to the Potholm Group of Harpswell for polling services.
The “Vote Yes on 2 for Maine” political action committee has conducted a flurry of spending since it took over the campaign from Rumford attorney Seth Carey in mid-September. The committee, which was registered Sept. 19, has a single donor: Olympia Gaming Maine, LLC, the firm that is proposing a more than $100 million casino in the town of Oxford. Olympia fronted $522,028.97 to the effort on Sept. 15. Since then, money has flowed out of the organization at a steady rate.
Campaign consultants Atlantic Strategies of Fairfield and CDM Communications of Portland, which contracts television, radio and print advertising, began receiving funds right away.
CDM, in the course of two weeks, was paid $158,950, which resulted in dozens of advertising contracts with television, radio, online and print organizations.
“Yes on 2 for Maine” reported a balance of $0 as of Sept. 30.
Carey’s political action committee, which collected signatures that led to the question on the Nov. 4 ballot, known as MaineCasinosNow.com, reported spending $92,394.39 since the beginning of the year, much of which Carey donated as cash or in kind with his own services. His expenditures over a several-month period trace a history of traveling to fairs and special events throughout Maine.
In the end, according to the report, Carey was left with $13,593.57 in debt.
