Maine Citizens for Clean Elections officially endorses a Foreign Corporate Contribution Ban Initiative.
This initiative will prohibit donations and disbursements by foreign governments, foreign government-owned entities, and foreign government-influenced entities in ballot measures and candidate campaigns. This evolved from a bill that we supported, which narrowly failed to override the Governor’s veto last spring. It also includes a resolve directing our elected leaders to support a federal Constitutional Amendment that would reign in money in politics.
This concern is based on the belief that our system of self-government should place political control in the hands of the sovereign people, and concerns that foreign interests will meddle with that process to leverage their influence or achieve results they cannot win through diplomacy.
Current federal law prohibits the involvement of foreign nationals in candidate campaigns, but it does not prohibit their involvement in issue and ballot question campaigns. Also, federal law does not address a variety of foreign financial interests beyond “foreign nationals” that may seek to influence our elections.
Our top priority in 2021 was to break the connection between corporate money and state candidates.
Too often, Maine’s democracy has been tarnished by significant corporate money – whether from pharmaceutical companies, utilities, insurance conglomerates – flowing into the coffers of candidates who will soon decide legislation vital to those sectors.
In 2020, we wrote legislation addressing this problem and brought it to Senator Louis Luchini – the Senate Chair of the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee.He agreed to sponsor the bill, and we began mobilizing our legislative efforts. Our goal was to make the case for this reform to all 186 legislators and see the bill through to the governor’s signature. We helped Mainers make more than 250 contacts with their legislators in support of the bill.
The bill also bans contributions from corporations to leadership PACs, and for the first time places contribution limits on other gifts to those PACs.
Over the course of many weeks, the legislature made some changes to the bill but finally advanced it to the governor’s desk. We were gratified when LD 1417 was signed into law on June 17, 2021. Maine now joins 22 other states and the federal government in banning corporate contributions.
