Good morning from Augusta. A new group called the Maine Outdoor Alliance has booked lots of time on Maine TV stations to air what is officially an issue ad … that name-checks Democratic 2nd Congressional District candidate Lucas St. Clair without expressly advocating for him.
While St. Clair’s campaign says it isn’t involved with the ads, it turns out that the group is linked to him and the pursuit that his family may now be best known for in Maine: establishing the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.
The ad walks a thin line between advocating for the monument and St. Clair himself. The group has bought at least $149,000 in airtime through mid-May in the Portland, Bangor and Presque Isle markets, according to filings with the federal government as of Tuesday.
Filings label it an an “issue” ad — or one that isn’t on behalf of a candidate — even as St. Clair runs in a June primary against Assistant Maine House Majority Leader Jared Golden and bookseller Craig Olson for the right to face Republican U.S. Rep Bruce Poliquin in November.
The ad, which is posted on the group’s Facebook page, starts as advocacy for a cause, featuring Lindsay Downing, a monument supporter who runs Mt. Chase Lodge in Patten. But about 20 seconds of the ad looks almost like a campaign advertisement, with several pictures of St. Clair.
“Lucas St. Clair was able to sit with the locals and hear their concerns,” Downing says at one point. “He was able to create a plan that worked for everybody.”
Eventually, Downing implores the viewer to call President Donald Trump’s administration and tell them to “leave our Katahdin monument alone” — which is curious since Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended against major changes to the monument last year.
It is unclear who’s funding it and St. Clair’s campaign says he isn’t involved, but there are ties to him. Documents filed with the Maine secretary of state show that the Maine Outdoor Alliance was founded in March. Its only officer was Nathan Deyesso, a furniture-maker from Scarborough. He was the best man at St. Clair’s 2007 wedding in Washington state, according to the magazine at Gould Academy, a boarding and day school in Bethel that both men attended.
The ads were booked with Maine stations through Canal Partners Media, a Washington, D.C., and Atlanta firm that is linked through a complaint to lawmakers in Montana to Barrett Kaiser, a Democratic operative from that state who was hired by Roxanne Quimby, the Burt’s Bees founder and St. Clair’s mother, to manage the monument effort.
Deyesso, Kaiser and Quimby didn’t respond to requests for comment. St. Clair spokesman David Farmer (also a Bangor Daily News columnist) said the campaign “has not been involved with the group or its activities” and the campaign “wouldn’t be involved in any outside spending of this nature.”
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “An ‘issue’ ad featuring Lucas St. Clair sure looks like campaign material,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Michael Shepherd, please follow this link to the BDN online.
