Got off a call on the Maine campaign to protect marriage equality, with a few updates:
I wrote last week that the campaign had a $10,000 matching grant from a donor in Maine. The donor then increased the match to $20,000, and we hit that by this past Friday. Thanks to all who gave, that is huge.
The co-chair of the anti-marriage equality group in Maine, Stand For Marriage Maine Coalition, compared LGBT couples to trees, saying:
A barren field full of stumps has had all its trees treated equally, to be sure. But that makes as much sense as looking at the extreme changes to Maine's marriage law approved recently by Gov. Baldacci and calling it marriage equality.
AUGUSTA, MAINE -- Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, an LGBT watchdog group, sent a letter detailing alleged election law violations by Stand for Marriage Maine to the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices. The request for an immediate investigation was sent yesterday to the Jonathan Wayne, the Commission's Executive Director and a copy to attorney General Janet Mills.
The nine page complaint (below) and fourteen attachments spell out how the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Knights of Columbus of Washington, DC and James Dobson's Focus on the Family had contributors give the money to their organizations, and then they in turn gave the money to the Stand for Marriage Maine in order to hide the identity of the donors.
[...]
"The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints (Mormon Church) created the National Organization for Marriage specifically to qualify and pass Prop 8 in California. Now they have NOM doing their bidding in Maine, Iowa and all over the Northeast," concluded Karger.
The campaign has set up a "Volunteer Vacation", a great idea, to help folks who want to help with the campaign go to Maine for a week. Immersing onesself in a campaign is really a great, and useful, experience. I did so in 2006 in NY-29 (Massa) managing field and not only was it really a get-away, I learned a lot.
I want to reiterate that this is literally a 10-week campaign until Election Day. It's going to go by fast. The campaign has set up four weeks in October to work, and will provide you with housing. We're also working with TravelForChange.org, which received donations of 11 million airline miles to help Obama volunteers travel last cycle, to help folks financially get to Maine. More on this soon. If you're all set to go with booking your own plane ticket now, sign up here. I'm looking at going up in late October. As Joe Sudbay (who's from Maine) wrote, the folks on the ground are the best, most experienced pros in the state, so you'll be in good hands.
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