PORTLAND — This week, Maine Democrats called on Bobby Charles to renounce his No Nonsense PAC for attempting to deceive voters by propping up former Maine GOP Chairman Rick Bennett.
Last week, BDN reported that No Nonsense PAC, a registered pro-Charles group, was spending at least $70,000 to prop up independent gubernatorial candidate Rick Bennett. That spend has since gone up.
In addition to their willful silence about the sleazy PAC, the Charles campaign has also taken lobbyist dollars despite claiming otherwise, accepted illegal campaign contributions, hidden his personal finances from voters, and scrubbed his campaign website from MAGA and Trump content after winning the Republican primary.
News Center Maine: Maine Democrats launch latest volley of critiques against Republican Bobby Charles, focusing on campaign finances
By Christian Harsa
Former candidates Nirav Shah and Jordan Wood took shots at Charles’ finances, campaign funding, and tactics. The Charles campaign rules the critiques away, questioning why, three weeks out, he is the focus and not issues hitting Maine families.
In the race for governor, Charles has been the focus of scrutiny as much as he has dished it out. The Maine Democratic Party has scrutinized his campaign finances, even filing a formal complaint with the Maine Ethics Commission for $25,000 in donations that exceeded the legal limit of $2,075 per donor.
Joining Shah and Wood was Maine Democratic Party (MDP) Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson. She questioned Charles’ commitment to taking no money from lobbyists, given his campaign has accepted $13,000 from D.C. area lobbyists according to a review done by MDP.
The brunt of other criticisms focused not on Charles directly but on the political action committee No Nonsense, which registered its priorities on the three-way governor’s race as pro-Charles and anti-Pingree.
According to public Maine Campaign Finance filings, No Nonsense PAC has spent nearly $250,000 against Democrat Hannah Pingree and about $100,000 in favor of independent Rick Bennett. No money has been spent directly on Charles.
One of the chief financiers of the PAC is Tom Klingenstein, a billionaire who is backing Republicans up and down ballots across America.
The finances of his own campaign and other PACs weren’t the only criticism, but also his own checkbook. The Democrats criticized Charles for not providing The Maine Monitor with the financial information the media outlet requested. From their time in government, Bennett and Pingree both have other financial information publicly available.
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