Anti-Gay Maine Campaign’s Lack of Grassroots Funding

Timothy Kincaid

July 15th, 2009

From Bangor Daily News

[Mark Mutty, one of Stand for Marriage Maine\’s campaign leaders,] predicted Wednesday that they will file “a very significant amount of signatures well in excess of the minimum” by early August. In addition to [$100,000 from] the Roman Catholic Diocese and [$160,000 from] the National Organization for Marriage, the organization also received $50,000 from the Knights of Columbus in Washington, D.C., and $31,000 from the Focus on the Family Maine Marriage Committee but only $400 from individuals.

Mutty pointed out that his organization\’s Web site has only been up for less than two weeks and he predicted that the number of individual donations will increase dramatically as the campaign ramps up.

Well duh. Almost anything would be a dramatic increase over $400.

In contrast

Connolly said Maine Freedom to Marry has already received support from a national organization, in this case, $25,000 from the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C. But he pointed out that his organization has already received donations from 352 individuals.

I’m sure this means nothing. But it’s interesting to note that at present the battle is between the big religious institutions and the citizens.

Richard W. Fitch

July 15th, 2009

Do the laws in Maine require disclosure of funding sources for this type of vote? If enough people see who is spending the money, they may have serious questions about motives.

Lindoro Almaviva

July 15th, 2009

The Knights can do with their money whatever the f**k they want.

[$100,000 from] the Roman Catholic Diocese Is this legal?

What the hell am I talking, The LDS spent millions in CA.

tavdy79

July 16th, 2009

Seems to me that the only way Stand for Marriage Maine can have got more cash from Maine citizens would be if almost every single Mainer who donated to Maine Freedom to Marry had only donated $1.

I wouldn’t be surprised if MFtM gets a lot of donations-in-kind as well, especially people volunteering their time. SfMM will probably end up paying people to do a lot of the jobs that MFtM will get done for free.

From what I know, Mainers don’t like out-of-staters messing in their politics. 70% of SfMM’s current cash hoard comes from out-of-state orgs – NOM, Knights of Columbus and FotF, and just over 0.1% from Maine citizens. So who looks like a bunch of out-of-staters messing in Maine politics?

Johnson

July 16th, 2009

Seems virtually all of the money is as the Mainers would “from away”, not from local sources at all.

Johnson

July 16th, 2009

Seems virtually all of of the money is, as the Mainers would say “from away”, not from local sources at all.

Penguinsaur

July 16th, 2009

And now we wait for the announcement bragging about how mainers obviously oppose equality because of how much money they’ve raised. *never mentioning from where*

Burr

July 16th, 2009

How dare we question the democratic will of Mainers… errr.. OUT OF STATE organizations to determine the shape and tenor of Maine’s society?

:P

Timothy (TRiG)

August 26th, 2009

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2009/08/same-sex-marriage-maine.html

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