Before there was Donald Sussman, there was Margot Milliken.
Sussman has contributed $2,971,741 dollars altogether to liberal causes and candidates this election cycle, including giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to PACs that support abortion rights and women’s issues.
Sussman may be the biggest benefactor Maine pro-choice advocates count on these days. But Margot Milliken’s advocacy for women’s reproductive and economic rights in Maine and New England spans decades and has earned her the title of “Founding Mother” from one of the state’s prominent philanthropies dedicated to girls and women.
Milliken gave $118,200 to campaigns this election cycle, including $50,000 to Planned Parenthood votes, which is described by Opensecrets.org as a “liberal-leaning super PAC and 527 organization which supports abortion rights issues,” and $30,000 to the Planned Parenthood Maine Action Fund, whose purpose is “to assist in the election of candidates who are pro-choice and pro-family planning.”
Born in 1952, Milliken came of age during the rise of feminism.
“I was part of the first generation to benefit from the doors that were opening,” she told the Maine Women’s Fund, where she served as board chair. She’s also been a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
Milliken’s political contributions over the last election cycle were almost entirely to Democrats: the Maine Democratic State Committee, Democratic House and Senate PACs, Shenna Bellows, Mike Michaud, Emily Cain, and Chellie Pingree, with one exception – Angus King, the independent whom Democrats love to support.
Her donations to Planned Parenthood vaulted her into the top 10 donors and will likely be used by the organization in its $500,000 campaign to elect Michaud and like-minded candidates to the legislature.
“I want to elect leaders who protect reproductive choice and rights, who believe in and will find solutions for climate change, and who are progressive in their values and priorities,” Milliken said.
“To paraphrase the words of the Pachamama Alliance, I do my work with hope for an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, and socially just human presence on this planet.”
But while Milliken’s contributions on behalf of Democrats will make progressives happy, they could be making her late father-in-law turn over in his grave.
The Milliken family’s money derives from its ownership of a huge textile and chemical company, led for 71 years by Roger Milliken, Margot’s father-in-law. Among the company’s products is the substance that gives creaminess to Jell-O Pudding.
The billionaire industrialist’s 2010 obituary in the New York Times was headlined, “Roger Milliken, Conservative Tycoon, Dies at 95,” and he was well-known as a supporter of Barry Goldwater, close to arch-conservative senators Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, and for closing one of his company’s mills immediately after employees there voted to unionize.
