A version of this article was originally published in The Daily Brief, our Maine politics newsletter. Sign up here for daily news and insight from politics editor Michael Shepherd.
The parents of Central Maine Power Co. and Versant Power have spent 30 times more than their opponents in the fight over Question 3, the item on Maine’s Nov. 7 ballot that would replace the companies with an elected board.
Heavy spending by the utilities has been a trend throughout this campaign, but it is an acute problem for Our Power, the group proposing the utility takeover, which has raised only about $1 million over the course of its campaign, according to updated filings covering the period between July and September that were due to the Maine Ethics Commission on Thursday.
CMP and Versant have swamped them, tossing in almost $32 million for their combined political efforts as of Sept. 30. Versant’s political group, Maine Energy Progress, surpassed CMP’s campaign arm to become the dominant spender on the opposition side during the last quarter.
It spent a staggering $2.4 million on TV and cable ads alone in August and September, also shelling out $1.4 million for canvassers and other field operations staff during those two months. CMP’s political arm, Maine Affordable Energy, has taken a small step back in the campaign, but it still threw $2 million into an ad campaign at the end of last month.
The utilities are already beginning to set aside more money for the last month of the campaign. Versant’s group had $4.6 million in unspent money from Enmax Corp., a company whose sole shareholder is the city of Calgary in the Canadian province of Alberta. CMP’s parent, Avangrid, which is in turn owned by the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, is funding its campaign.
This spending shows how just certain pieces of the utilities’ political effort are dwarfing the operation being run by Our Power. Money does not always win campaigns. CMP, for example, spent a record-smashing sum and lost a 2021 referendum on their hydropower corridor project.
But a different situation now seems to be brewing in the electorate. Versant’s political group released a poll last month showing the utilities with a comfortable edge on the underdogs promoting Question 3, although it did not release key details on how it conducted the poll.
The money difference at this point is going to make it hard for Our Power to close the gap. While It has been advertising online, it does not look to have the money for a major round of TV ads.
The utilities have been advertising on TV down to streaming services for months, hammering Mainers with messages on the overall cost of borrowing needed to buy them out. They say this will cost $13.5 billion. Question 3 proponents argue it will be less, and a 2020 study found that rates may go down over the long term under such a regime.
