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July 16, 2013

Corporate donations help fuel governor's race

Candidates for Maine's 2014 gubernatorial race have raised over $1 million collectively, with about $800,000 raised since January, according to campaign finance reports filed yesterday. Around $50,000 of those donations came from corporate sources and $14,000 from political action committees.

Interactive: See contributions for each candidate by Maine town, state and top corporate contributors.

Overall, most of the money raised in-state came from the southern Maine towns of Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth, Yarmouth and Scarborough. Portland fundraising far outpaced totals reported from the Bangor and the Lewiston-Auburn areas.

Independent candidate Eliot Cutler led the field in the first half of this year with $449,000 raised for his second gubernatorial bid. Republican Gov. Paul LePage raised around $124,000 since January but amassed a total of $340,000 with his campaign effort that started early last year, the Morning Sentinel reported. Democratic candidate and U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud raised $313,530 since June when he announced his intention to run, according to the latest filing.

The geographic makeup of this latest fundraising round reflects efforts by candidates Cutler and Michaud, both of whom claimed Portland and then Cape Elizabeth as their top two sources of funds in the last reporting period. While LePage brought in less than his most prominent challengers during this reporting period, his top three in-state fundraising locations included Bangor, Windham and Jackman.

That geographic split also shows up in the candidates' top corporate donations. Each had corporate contributors giving the maximum donations, according to campaign finance regulations, with Cutler as the only candidate to have out-of-state corporate donors among those that gave over $1,000 to his election effort.

See a full list of the top corporate contributors and their locations in the "Top corporate donors" tab of the chart above.

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