Senate President Justin Alfond (D-Portland) is taking his lead from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — both Democrats have decided the path to reelection involves villanizing two wealthy American entrepreneurs.
“We all have targets on our backs,” Alfond said in a recent fundraising pitch. “The national Koch Brothers-funded national (sic) Republican Party has picked Maine as one of its top targets for flipping control of the Legislature. They’re still angry that you helped us take back the majority in 2012, and they will stop at nothing to take it back.”
“Together, we’ll make sure that the 2014 election is decided by working people, and not the Koch Brothers,” Alfond says.
Alfond ran with taxpayer funding, despite his own personal wealth, and cannot solicit outside funds for his personal reelection campaign. This solicitation was sent on behalf of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, a political action committee that allows candidates who run “clean” to still take money from lobbyists, corporations and wealthy donors.
Alfond, himself a prolific giver to Democratic causes and candidates, also happens to be the beneficiary of his own politically active billionaire, S. Donald Sussman.
Sussman may not be as successful as Charles or David Koch, but his concentrated giving in Maine has been arguably more influential than anything the Kochs have done. He has donated to the Maine Equal Justice Partners, the Maine People’s Alliance, and the Maine Democratic Party. According to the New York Times, Sussman is planning to leverage these groups to influence Maine’s elections this fall.
“In Maine,” the New York Times recently wrote, “a consortium of progressive groups financed by the hedge fund billionaire S. Donald Sussman, [a Democracy Alliance] member, is looking to unseat Gov. Paul R. LePAge this year and put both the governor’s office and the Legislature under Democratic control.”
