A California couple who since 2009 has been sounding the alarm about their losing real estate venture with Donald Trump now wants voters in Maine’s 2nd District to know they are Aroostook County natives.
Linda and Stephen Drake, originally from Allagash and Caribou, are among the people around the country who say they lost money to a business connected with the Republican presidential nominee.
In the final stretch of the presidential campaign, amid new sexual assault allegations against Trump, the Drakes are speaking out again with their tale of apparently losing money on Trump-licensed condos that were never built – and with their fears about the future of the country.
“I pray that sensible people want to keep harmony and peace in this country,” Linda Drake said in an interview Friday. “As a psychologist, a mother, a wife, a community activist, it hurts me to see where our country is going.”
The couple have lived in southern California since the late 1970s, when Linda came for graduate school. By the 2000s, both were successful in their careers, Linda in organizational psychology and Stephen as a United Parcel Service pilot, and they wanted to invest in a vacation home nearby.
In 2006 they thought they found what they were looking for in the Trump Ocean Resort Baja, planned for construction two hours south of their home along Mexico’s coast. The Drakes made a $240,000 down payment on an $800,000, two-bedroom condo. The project, Linda Drake said, was never built – amid a confluence of problems that included permitting issues and the beginning of the Great Recession – and they never got back the full amount of their down payment.
They eventually got a letter from a Mexican firm saying the project would not be built, and refunds were not available, she said. The Drakes connected with the other would-be condo buyers, hired two attorneys and sued.
The project was supposed to be built by the Colorado-based Irongate Capital Partners and licensed with the Trump brand, via the Trump Organization company, and both ended up settling with the investors for undisclosed sums in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The would-be condo owners who settled agreed with the companies not to divulge how much money they received.
Requests for comment sent to the Trump campaign and Trump Organization have not been returned.
The Drakes visit The County somewhat regularly. Linda Drake picked potatoes from the age of 10 and in college at the University of Maine at Presque Isle she worked two seasons as a field manager for the late Caribou farmer Carroll Anderson. Anderson later nominated Drake to the National Potato Board, which she served on for seven years.
“Perseverance, working for reward, working as a team – I learned all of that in the potato harvest,” Drake said. “All of those skills gave me freedom.”
