PORTLAND — Retiring U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, announced Friday that the bulk of her re-election war chest will not go to other Republican candidates but instead to a Maine charity.

Federal campaign finance laws would have prohibited Snowe from rolling $2 million in campaign funds into another candidate’s campaign but she could have transferred the funds to the Maine Republican Party for disbursement to Republican candidates.

Snowe, Maine’s senior U.S. senator, announced in February she would not seek re-election. At the time Snowe said she sees a “vital need for the political center in order for our democracy to flourish and to find solutions that unite rather than divide us.” 

During a March news conference in Portland Snowe told reporters, “the sensible center has virtually disappeared.”

A release issued Friday by her campaign treasurer Lucas Caron stated $1.2 million would go to the Maine Community Foundation to be used in support of a women’s leadership institute to be established in Snowe’s name.

About $800,000 of her remaining campaign funds would be used for politics, Caron stated.

“The remaining balance of approximately $800,000 is being used for outstanding campaign obligations and the establishment of a multi-candidate committee whose goals are to build the political center to diminish the polarization in today’s political environment, and to support like-minded candidates who are committed to reaching across the political aisle to produce results on those issues that are critical to America’s future,” Caron’s release stated.

“I look forward to continuing to contribute to the development of young women in Maine through this new institute and, hopefully, inspiring them to participate in public service,” Snowe said in a prepared statement. “I am also determined to continue to work, through my multi-candidate committee, to bridge the partisan divide that has become an enormous impediment to finding solutions to the problems we face as a nation.”

Meredith Jones, president and CEO of the Maine Community Foundation, said her organization was pleased to help Snowe fulfill her philanthropic vision.

“Her plan to create a women’s leadership institute aligns with one of the Maine Community Foundation’s priorities: to develop new leadership in Maine,” Jones said in a prepared statement. 

Caron said Friday some of the $800,000 that was not going to charity could be donated to candidates and that Snowe has previously said she would support the Republican Party’s nominee for her seat in Maine.

Maine Secretary of State Charles Summers won the GOP primary in a six-way race in June to become the party’s nominee.

Calls to Summers’ campaign for comment were not immediately returned Friday.

Caron said Snowe would be the one to decide which candidates she considered “like-minded” and which candidates would receive any funding.

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