A political action committee flooded two recent Skowhegan Board of Selectmen races with mailers and calls in an ultimately successful effort to elect three new, conservative members to the five-person body.

State campaign finance records show Revive Home Town Maine PAC, which is run by Somerset County commissioners Joel Stetkis and Scott Seekins, spent thousands of dollars across the February and June elections on mailers, calls and texts supporting the candidacies of Whitney Cunliffe, Ethan Liberty and Kevin Nelson.

All three candidates won their elections comfortably and almost immediately coalesced into a new majority on the board — raising questions about the impact of political action committee spending in low-turnout local elections, where experts say name recognition and get-out-the-vote efforts can make all the difference.

MONEY IN, MONEY OUT

While Revive Home Town Maine PAC doesn’t have a website, a Facebook page or any online footprint beyond filings to the Maine Ethics Commission, it has been successful in raising money.

Its officers, Stetkis and Seekins, have raised more than $150,000 and spent more than $145,000 since the group was formed in 2017. Since Oct. 1, the group has raised more than $20,000 and spent more than $30,000,  including almost $7,000 in the two most recent Skowhegan select board elections.

Nothing bars political action committee support of local elections but Mark Brewer, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Maine, said it’s very uncommon in Maine’s local politics. He said PAC money, from either side, is rare even in cities like Bangor — so to see outside money in a Skowhegan town election is notable.

“People would look at that and say, ‘Oh, that’s nothing,'” Brewer said. “If we were talking state level or federal level, or if we were talking about local races in some other states — sure, that doesn’t amount to much. But in Maine, that amounts to real money and something we should be paying attention to.”

Maine Ethics Commission records don’t appear to show any other outside spending in the races, and no other groups sent out mailers to Skowhegan residents.

Both Stekis and Seekins are Somerset County commissioners — Stetkis for District 5, which encompasses much of rural northern Somerset County, and Seekins for District 3, which covers the southeastern portion of the county. Neither represents Skowhegan.

Stetkis, notably, is a former Republican state representative and the former chair of the Maine Republican Party. He was voted out of that position in December — but in October, while he was still leading the state GOP, Revive Home Town Maine PAC donated $8,000 to the party for an undisclosed reason.

Seekins is the vice chair of the Somerset County Republican Committee, which donated $500 to Revive Home Town Maine PAC during the June election cycle.

Neither Stetkis nor Seekins responded to requests seeking comment.

After last fall’s general election — when Revive Home Town Maine PAC funded signs and mailers in four closely fought state legislative contests — the organization has paid for election activity in just two races: the February and June Skowhegan select board elections. By law, PACs can’t donate directly to candidates or coordinate with them on spending, but they can spend money independently to support or oppose a candidate for any office.

On Feb. 5, the PAC paid New Hampshire-based Spectrum Marketing Companies Inc. a total of $1,576.82 to mail flyers and make calls or texts in favor of Cunliffe’s candidacy for the select board. A week later, Cunliffe was elected with 269 of a total 515 votes — a low turnout that meant the PAC had spent more than $3 per voter.

From May 29 to June 7, the PAC paid Spectrum Marketing a total of $5,335.92 for three sets of flyers and a round of robocalls to Skowhegan residents, supporting Liberty and Nelson and touting them as candidates who would lower property taxes and promote a “safer Skowhegan,” even including quotes from both candidates. Two of the flyers said the pair would tackle “drugs, homelessness and crime.”

Nelson and Liberty won the June 10 election by about a 300-vote margin over Ester Franklin and 400 votes over incumbent board chair Paul York. Revive Home Town Maine PAC spent about $6 per voter in that election.

The single largest funder of the PAC is Maine Civic Action, a conservative nonprofit that hopes to “engage all levels of Maine government to pursue solutions that promote free markets, fiscal responsibility, and accountable government.” Maine Civic Action is the sister organization of the Maine Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank that operates the Maine Wire, a conservative news outlet.

Maine Civic Action is registered as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, a designation that allows the group to skirt campaign finance rules governing other kinds of nonprofits and PACs.

Like other nonprofits, 501(c)(4)s can accept unlimited donations but are not required to disclose their donors — sometimes leading to “dark money” accusations. PACs, on the other hand, must disclose donors.

But, unlike other nonprofit types, 501(c)(4)s like Maine Civic Action can spend money to influence elections, as long as it is not their primary purpose. This line has long been blurry, but the limit is generally considered by legal and nonprofit experts to be, at most, 50% of a nonprofit’s spending.

“It creates a situation where money is being used to influence the voters, but the voters don’t really have the information, the background about where that money is coming from — who is it that’s trying to influence this election? What are their motivations?” Brendan Glavin, the director of insights at campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, said. “That’s being kept from them.”

NEW MAJORITY

Following the June 10 election, with York, the incumbent chairman, no longer on the board, Skowhegan needed a new chair.

Without saying a word, the trio — Cunliffe, Liberty and Nelson — shot down a nomination during the board’s June 24 meeting for another member, Amber Lambke, to serve as chair. It was the first select board meeting for Liberty and Nelson.

Nelson then nominated Cunliffe, who’d been elected four months earlier, to be chair. Along the same voting lines, 3-2, Cunliffe was elected as the board’s new leader.

Lambke said she was surprised by the two votes, given her extensive experience as chair of several boards and Cunliffe saying during the meeting that he had never held a chairperson position. She said she also will keep an eye on political action committee spending in local politics in the future, which she said she sees as the “bigger issue.”

Regardless, she said she holds no grudges.

“They all want the best for Skowhegan — we all want the best for Skowhegan,” Lambke said. “We may not agree on how to get there, but it is for us to model a good process for making decisions together. I’m excited to work with this board, even with the (chair) decision and even with the PAC funding that got these folks elected. I still remain committed and excited to work to bring good things to Skowhegan.”

The three newcomers now hold a solid majority on the select board — a political success that Brewer said could be replicated in other rural towns.

“Politics is a lot like the NFL: If somebody has success doing something, then other people are going to do it, too, until somebody stops it,” he said.

That replication can be relatively cheap for PACs and other groups, because just two or three mailers can make all the difference, Brewer said.

Local elections, he said, tend to be low-information races. Without local renown or a party affiliation — the overwhelming majority of Maine’s municipal elections are nonpartisan — name recognition becomes the major driver for voters at the polls, Brewer said.

“One thing that we know, based on the research, is that campaign spending can build name recognition,” Brewer said. “In a race like this … spending a couple thousand dollars to get people to know who these candidates are, that they’re running for this seat — and, by the way, election day is in June, and you should go out and vote for them — that can be a relatively low-cost but effective investment.”

Liberty said he generally agreed with the content of the mailers, but he did not know they were being produced.

Despite donations to the PAC from numerous conservative organizations and its leaders’ affiliations with GOP groups, Liberty said he saw the mailers as a “huge sign of support for my beliefs and my values,” and that he did not see the effort as related to either political party.

“(Political parties don’t) mean anything,” he said. “The job of the select board is to support the people of the town and what needs to happen in the town to make it a better place to live, and that’s my plan.”

Nelson also said he received one of the flyers before the June election, entirely unaware that they had been sent out.

“I thought they were pretty nice,” Nelson said. “I thought they did a good job on them.”

In response to further emailed questions about Revive Home Town Maine PAC and its influence in Skowhegan’s recent elections, Nelson said his “only comment is that Skowhegan voters made their decision on a need for change, and voted to make that change at the ballot box.”

Cunliffe did not respond to requests for comment.