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.
Both parties have used these tactics since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down limits on independent spending in 2010. Collins was targeted early in her 2020 campaign by a Democratic dark-money operation and was heavily outspent. This time, Republicans rallied around her early, amid the chaos after Democratic nominee Graham Platner dropped out in July following a rape allegation he denied.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC tied to Senate Republican leaders, began a scorched-earth series of ads against Jackson over the weekend, including one calling him “a crook and a creep.” Along with an offshoot, SLF 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. She denies wrongdoing and has defended Reed’s character.
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.
At Thursday’s final debate in Bangor, Collins said dark money groups shouldn’t exist. Asked Sunday about the dinner and Collins’ ties to Pine Tree, campaign spokesperson Blake Kernen did not address either. She noted that Collins has been a major target of dark money and backs “balanced reforms” protecting speech rights.
“But our campaign is unwilling to continue to be subjected to lies paid for by dark money without fighting back,” Kernen said.
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.
Dark money is also flowing through the Democratic side. WinSenate, a super PAC aligned with the party’s Senate campaign arm, has booked $38.6 million in Maine. It ran one of the most inflammatory ads of the cycle, which misleadingly tied Collins to Jeffrey Epstein. Its funder, Senate Majority PAC, got about a third of its money through June from Majority Forward, a nonprofit that doesn’t disclose donors, according to Issue One.
Campaign finance has been a sticking point between the candidates. When Collins noted at Tuesday’s debate that Jackson had not yet filed his first fundraising report, he promised to produce it the next morning, saying there were “no billionaires funding me.”
He filed it minutes before Thursday’s debate. Seven billionaires had given his campaign a combined $24,500, according to a BDN review of the report and Forbes billionaire lists. 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.
On Thursday, Collins pressed Jackson over his joint ads with Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, which takes money from billionaires and corporate PACs that he and many Democrats rejects. Jackson conceded he has billionaire support but said he owes them nothing. His campaign said he would push to require disclosure of dark money “regardless of which party benefits.”
“Billionaires have bought Congress, and everyday people can’t afford to buy them back,” Jackson said at Thursday’s debate.