Politics
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Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Bobby Charles put up and apparently deleted a website called “The Real Garrett Mason” that featured false information about his rival’s basic biography and political history.
The site was live Monday before being taken down after people in the party flagged the wrong information on Mason, a lobbyist and former Maine Senate majority leader. He served as a state senator from 2010 to 2018, winning the leadership post for the last four years of then-Gov. Paul LePage’s term.
Charles’ website somehow said he has been Senate president since 2018, a position he never held across a period of solid Democratic control of Augusta. It also said Mason began his legislative service as a House member in 2002. He never served in the House and was 17 years old at that time.
Some of that biographical information looks to have been based on the biography of former Senate President Troy Jackson, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate who debated Charles last month, first became a lawmaker in 2002 and won the Senate presidency in 2018. The Charles campaign often uses artificial intelligence to create ads and other material.
Charles strategist Vincent Harris did not answer a Monday question about why the site was taken down but said “if there was a mixup it was likely because in many ways, [Mason and Jackson] have a similar record.”
“Maine is broken, and these corrupt politicians like Garrett Mason and Troy Jackson put us in this place,” he wrote in an email. “Bobby Charles is a veteran, an outsider, and he’s running to reform the broken system that is Augusta.”
That was a reference to Mason’s help from Republican megadonors Richard Uihlein and Thomas Klingenstein, wh o are behind a political group that has already spent $1.7 million on reservations for pro-Mason ads that have made him a target of the rest of the field. Fellow candidate David Jones criticized that during a debate exchange last week.
Others in the field jumped on Charles for the false attacks. Lauren LePage, a strategist for Ben Midgley, called it “amateur hour” on a Facebook thread by The Maine Wire’s Steve Robinson.
“We cannot afford to make these mistakes and expect to win in November,” LePage wrote.