LEWISTON – George Soros, one of the world’s richest men and one of President George Bush’s biggest adversaries, has come to Lewiston via a new political activist office he is helping to finance.

America Coming Together, formed to defeat Republicans and elect Democrats, has opened its only Maine office on the 5th floor at 145 Lisbon St., according to communications director Bill Brown. Brown is taking a leave from the Maine House Speaker’s Office.

ACT is currently working in 20 states. Lewiston was chosen as the Maine headquarters because the city offers easy access to both the 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts, Brown said.

Brown is one of four full-time workers in the office headed by Rich Pelletier, another seasoned campaign worker. The group is organizing volunteers and canvassers. The mission: an on-the-ground, knock-on-doors effort to galvanize Mainers to not vote for Republicans. When asked who’s paying for all of this, Brown said, “Have you heard of George Soros?”

Soros, 73, of New York, is one of ACT’s biggest contributors, donating $10 million of its $75 million national budget. He is a global financier and billionaire who is spending millions to defeat Bush.

Soros grew up in Nazi-occupied Hungary and has said said he hears echoes of “supremacist ideology” from the Bush administration. In a column published in December in the Washington Post, Soros wrote that he and other wealthy Americans are contributing millions “because we are deeply concerned with the direction in which the Bush administration is taking the United States and the world.”

In a November interview with the Post, Soros said that with Bush as president, he considers America “a danger to the world … and I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.”

ACT was created by EMILY’s List President Ellen Malcolm, Steve Rosenthal of Partnership for America’s Families, and Andy Stern, president of Service Employees International Union.

Up and running for a few weeks, the Maine office is already sending out press releases some with a humorous tone. On Thursday it announced a new Web site: www.BushGivesMeGasPains.com, which says “no tank you” for Bush-oil industry ties. It faults Bush for not taking action, “while in Lewiston alone, gas is up $2.05 a gallon.”

Republicans predict the group will fail in Maine.

“Voters are looking for a positive agenda. … These people are offering political rhetoric. I don’t think voters are going to buy it,” said Dwayne Bickford of the Maine Republican Party. “They’re not representing the mainstream, they’re supporting liberal candidates,” he said.

The problem with ACT is they have no agenda “other than to defeat Republicans. They’re angry because John Kerry’s not the president, but anger is not an agenda,” said Bickford.

Even with wealthy people like Soros backing Democrat John Kerry, the Bush campaign has far more money than Democrats “because people are excited about his campaign,” Bickford said.

Republicans will react by “working hard” with door-to-door voter registration drives, phone calls to enlist volunteers and calls to find out what voters care about, Bickford said. “That’s how we’re going to combat them.”

Renee Cote of Auburn, a middle-aged working parent, said she is buying what ACT has to say. She has become a volunteer and will knock on doors urging people not to re-elect Bush.

For her, one reason is the death of Beau Beaulieu, 20, of Lisbon, Maine’s latest soldier to die in Iraq. “That someone could start a war under false pretense and carry it out, the loss of goodwill across the globe, and the cost of lives and money, is just shocking,” Cote said.

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