Two dark money nonprofits incorporated in Delaware with no public presence and no disclosed staff have contributed at least $750,000 to a super PAC working to defeat likely Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine. A federal watchdog group says the groups’ spending looks like an illegal straw donor scheme.
Condorcet Initiative Corp. has given $500,000 to Pine Tree Results PAC across two separate donations, including $250,000 on May 1 that was disclosed in a filing reported to the Federal Election Commission last week. Ardleigh Impact Corporation contributed an additional $250,000 in April. The PAC has spent nearly $4 million on attack ads against Sen. Susan Collins’ Democratic challenger Graham Platner, according to FEC data. Rather than engaging with policy, the ads are exclusively focused on personal attacks against Platner, digging up comments the candidate made online going back as far as 2013.
Both organizations list a Springfield, Virginia address—7816 Rose Garden Lane—that property records show is the home of Staci Goede, a former chief financial officer of the Republican State Leadership Committee who now runs a political consulting firm called SAGE Advisory Group. Ardleigh was incorporated in Delaware in October 2023 and began funneling millions of dollars of dark money into Republican super PACs just months later, and Condorcet was established in December 2023 and has followed a similar pattern. Neither group has a public website or any visible activity beyond writing checks to political committees.
In May 2024, the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC arguing that Ardleigh Impact Corporation could not plausibly have generated sufficient funds on its own to make millions of dollars in contributions in the months after its formation, and that the true source of the money was being illegally concealed behind the nonprofit shell. The complaint has been pending for more than two years, and the FEC currently lacks the quorum it needs to conduct much of its business, including taking action on complaints. Ardleigh’s total contributions have grown from the $2.575 million that prompted the original complaint to about $6 million as of the latest FEC data.
