Augusta, ME – In a new exposé, the Bangor Daily News revealed how Susan Collins’ campaign is primarily powered by dark money groups financed by MAGA billionaires. According to the report, the $126 million in dark money spending on Collins behalf is backed by some of President Trump’s most infamous billionaire allies, including Elon Musk, private equity CEO Stephen Schwarzman, and Federalist Society Co-Chairman Leonard Leo. The report also pointed out how nearly $30 million of this spending has been overseen by Scott Reed, the man who allegedly helped Navatek CEO Martin Kao illegally funnel $150,000 into a pro-Collins’ super PAC back in 2019.

In response to the new revelations, Misha Linnehan, spokesperson for the Maine Democratic Party, released the following statement:

“A year after Susan Collins voted to advance Trump’s massive tax cut for the rich, MAGA billionaires are flooding Maine with cash on her behalf. Mainers deserve a Senator who answers to them – not one who owes her only chance at political survival to Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their wealthy, right-wing friends.”

Read more here:

Bangor Daily News: Untangling the massive outside money web behind Susan Collins

By Michael Shepherd

October 19, 2026

• An intertwined Republican network of super PACs and nonprofits has booked about $126 million in ads to reelect U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, with much of it traced to billionaires and donors who will never be named.

• That is nearly all of the ad time booked by Republican outside groups in the five-term senator’s toss-up race against former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, according to AdImpact data counting time aired and reserved through year’s end.

• The dizzying network is throwing huge sums at a seat that could decide control of the U.S. Senate. Campaign finance reports filed Thursday showed how tightly the groups behind Collins are bound together. Billionaires and donor-shielding nonprofits fund several of them at once. Some groups seem to exist mostly to pass money to others. […]

• Along with an offshoot, [Senate Leadership Fund] is the biggest outside spender in the race, having booked nearly $50 million in Maine ads.

• Its top donor is One Nation, a nonprofit sister group that doesn’t reveal its funders. One Nation gave the fund $132.9 million through September and has booked nearly $35 million in its own pro-Collins ads. Billionaires supply much of the rest, led by Miriam Adelson and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Elon Musk gave $10 million.

• Collins’ closest ties to the network run through Pine Tree Results PAC, which has booked $29.1 million in ads. It is run by Scott Reed, a Republican operative and friend of Collins’ husband, Tom Daffron, who was paid as a consultant by Reed’s lobbying firm last year. Pine Tree and her campaign also share limited fundraising functions, something federal regulators allow.

• Reed ran a different super PAC backing Collins in 2020 that took an illegal $150,000 donation from a defense contractor, the focus of a ProPublica report last month. […]

• Pine Tree’s donors also include Schwarzman, Ken Griffin and two nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors: Stronger America and the Lexington Fund, part of a network linked to conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. Stronger America has booked nearly $12 million in Maine ads. Collins attended a July dinner the group hosted in Washington, The New York Times reported.[…]

• Smaller groups pass money among themselves. Nearly all of the money raised by the Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund, which sent $1 million to another pro-Collins group, came from Ardleigh Impact Corp. and another Delaware nonprofit with the same treasurer, Staci Goede. Groups that list her as treasurer have also given millions to SLF and Pine Tree.

• Goede and Les Williamson, treasurer of the Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund, did not respond to questions about who is behind the groups.

• The Campaign Legal Center alleged in a 2024 FEC complaint that Ardleigh was used to hide the true sources of money given to super PACs. The complaint is still pending before a Federal Election Commission that lacks enough commissioners to fully operate, noted Saurav Ghosh, the group’s director of federal campaign finance reform. […]

• Nearly 100 billionaires and spouses gave $9.8 million to Collins’ campaign and other groups working on her behalf from January 2025 through May, The Maine Monitor found.