Who’s Funding the Super PAC Attacking Graham Platner?

A flood of billionaire money is pouring into Maine’s Senate race to stop a populist challenger.

By Donald Shaw, The Nation

A super PAC dedicated to reelecting Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine recently put nearly $2 million behind television and YouTube ads attacking likely Democratic candidate Graham Platner. The spots, which began airing more than a month before the June 9 Democratic primary, focus exclusively on decade-old personal social-media posts and a tattoo Platner got as a young man and has since covered up. There is no discussion of policy, voting records, or Platner’s platform as a Marine veteran running as a working-class populist. Instead, the ads—focused on the theme “Who Is The Real Graham Platner?”—center entirely on personal attacks, financed largely by out-of-state billionaires and Republican-aligned “dark money” groups seeking to preserve Collins’s seat and the GOP Senate majority.

With Governor Janet Mills recently withdrawing from the Democratic primary citing insufficient financial resources to compete with Platner, the November contest will present a stark contrast between the populist challenger and incumbent Senator Collins. As one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, the contest is expected to be pivotal to determining control of the upper chamber, with Democrats viewing a Platner victory as their best opportunity for flipping the Senate.

The group behind the ads is Pine Tree Results PAC, a super PAC formed in early 2025 that has raised $12.7 million through the end of March, almost entirely from wealthy individuals, corporations, and dark-money nonprofits. Federal Election Commission records show its funding comes from some of the country’s most prominent Republican donors from private equity, oil, media, and conservative dark-money networks. None of it comes from Maine voters.

The single largest donor is Stronger America, Inc., a conservative nonprofit based out of Arlington, Virginia, that is led by longtime Republican operative and former Senate counsel Paul Cooksey. The group gave $3 million to Pine Tree Results in December, and it has also given at least $400,000 this cycle to a pro–Susan Collins super PAC called Stronger Maine. As a 501c(4) social welfare group, Stronger America is not required to release information about its donors.