AUGUSTA — A political action committee established and controlled by Rep. Diane Russell, D-Portland, with the stated mission to “help support Democrats in winning seats in the Maine House,” paid almost 20 percent of its total expenditures to her for “online organizing” and spent less than 4 percent of its payments to directly support candidates.

Since 2013, Russell’s “leadership PAC,” named the Working Families PAC, paid her $7,747 of its total expenditures of $39,583. Most of the payments to Russell were in 2014. The PAC gave $1,550 in contributions to Democratic candidates or organizations.

The rest of the PAC’s spending was on travel, food, fundraising, office expenses and a few other small categories.

Asked how her PAC’s spending fulfilled the mission of helping support Democrats in winning seats in the Maine House, Russell said, “Oh, is that the mission statement of the PAC? I haven’t changed it?”

Russell said the work the PAC paid her for was to drum up support for progressive causes and to advocate both inside and outside Maine. She said the PAC money paid her for time spent building that list.

“I have a pretty sizable email list nationwide,” Russell said. “I use that often to help people battling progressive battles, either locally or nationally.

“No one in the state has built what I have built; very few lawmakers in the country have built what I have built. It is a progressive power machine and I am more than happy to turn it on.”

Her PAC, she said, “allows me to expense the amount of time I spend doing that … working on issues I really care about.

“I took a little bit of payment for myself to make sure we had enough money to build this,” Russell said.

A “leadership PAC” is a political action committee run by a current member of the Legislature or, in rare cases, a former legislator, who aspires to a leadership position. Other lawmakers have used the money in their leadership PACs in support of fellow party members’ electoral ambitions, either directly or indirectly, such as through events.

For example, in 2014, House Assistant Majority Leader Sara Gideon of Freeport donated $15,275 from her leadership PAC’s total spending of $16,991 to Democratic candidates and the House Democratic Campaign Committee.

House Majority Leader Jeff McCabe’s PAC spent $30,650 of total PAC spending of $48,487 in 2014 to support Democrats seeking the governorship and legislative and congressional offices. McCabe is a Democrat from Skowhegan.

And House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, a Republican from Newport, used $26,625 of his PAC’s total spending of $62,791 in 2014 to directly support Republican candidates and many thousands of dollars more to indirectly support them.

Gideon, McCabe and Fredette were not paid by their PACs for any services.

Steven Biel, a Maine-based Internet fundraising expert who has worked with the national progressive group MoveOn.org and others, called the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting to offer a testimonial about Russell at her request. He said her list-building fit with the goal of her PAC.

Russell, he said, was “building the small donor base of the Democratic Party while driving campaign messaging to advance the Maine Democratic party.”

Few rules on PAC spending

Leadership PAC money comes from contributions from supporters. In many cases, industries and businesses with a stake in legislation will donate money to leadership PACs, hoping to influence lawmakers. Russell’s PAC counts among its donors law firm Pierce Atwood, construction firm Reed and Reed and marijuana, real estate and beer and wine interests.

Russell told the Sun Journal she also receives many small donations and that her average donation is $28.

There are no rules against Russell, or any other legislator, using PAC money to pay themselves, according to Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Elections Practices.

“PACs have a great deal of discretion as to how they use their funds,” Wayne said.

“I was told that I can use the PAC money to help elevate causes, and that’s what I’ve been doing,” said Russell, who did not identify who told her that.

But, Wayne said, “It’s very rare that we see PACs paying legislators for services.”

A review of PAC expenditures since 2013 by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting found no other legislators who used their PACs to pay themselves directly for work. Sen. Garrett Mason, R-Lisbon, used his PAC to pay himself $1,092 in the category of “campaign workers’ salaries and personnel costs,” but records show that was a reimbursement for payments to interns, not to himself.

Wayne said he could “only think of a couple of examples” of PACs paying legislators “off the top of my head.” Those examples include Russell and former Sen. John Tuttle, D-Sanford, who lost his bid for re-election in 2014, after spending 28 years in the Legislature.

Tuttle’s loss came after the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting revealed that he used his PAC, established to help other Democratic candidates run for office, to buy tires, pay for car repairs, reimburse himself for travel and pay his wife and daughter for computer services and keeping his books.

Of the $31,179 spent by Tuttle’s political action committee since 2008, 55 percent — or $17,251 — went to him, family members and expenses related to them, while 30 percent went to help other Democratic candidates.

And in 2012, a reporter for the Current Newspapers wrote that then-Sen. Cynthia Dill, D-Cape Elizabeth, had used her leadership PAC, the Dill Leadership Fund, to pay herself $4,000 to write a blog.

Legislators earn $24,686 for the two-year session they serve. They are also paid $38 per day either for housing or mileage and tolls. Lawmakers also receive $32 per day for meals.

Coffee meetings, travel

The expenditures of Russell’s PAC between 2013 and 2015 also include multiple payments to a coffee shop near her Munjoy Hill home for “coffee meeting(s).” The PAC paid $3,507 for food and $5,754 for travel costs, including charges associated with travel to conferences in places such as Las Vegas, San Francisco and Morocco.

Asked how having her PAC pay for expenses associated with those out-of-state trips advanced the PAC’s mission to “help support Democrats in winning seats in the Maine House,” Russell said it didn’t.

“Is it specific to the Maine House?” she said. “No, but it has a lot to do with elevating the dialogue and making sure I understand how to help women get elected.”

Travel incidentals paid for by Russell’s PAC included $150 in cash for “for tips, taxis, food, etc. while in Morocco for Wand/East West Institute Conference. Charge cards were not often usable.” The Morocco travel and associated events were paid for by a nonprofit women’s advocacy group.

Russell reported in state filings that the PAC also made three payments for a New York Times subscription, made 12 payments between July 2013 and November 2014 to Virgin Mobile for “phone,” and spent $1,651.90 in June 2013 at the Apple Store at the Maine Mall for “equipment.”

Russell is a nationally known progressive who was named “Most Valuable State Representative” by the left-leaning Nation Magazine in 2011. She is also well-known for having sought to pass legislation legalizing marijuana in Maine. Those efforts were unsuccessful.

She is running in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat from Portland that is being vacated by Justin Alfond.

According to the ethics commission, Russell has a history of campaign finance violations related to her PAC and her participation in the public funding program known as the Maine Clean Election Act:

• She was two months late in returning unspent Maine Clean Election Act funds due in December 2014.

• She did not file her PAC’s report due Jan. 15, 2015. The PAC paid a penalty of $1,575.

• She did not file the PAC’s report due July 2015. The PAC paid a penalty of $556.80.

• Her PAC was fined $2,000 in December 2015 by Maine ethics regulators for leaving some expenditures unreported for more than a year.

PAC reform bill vetoed

Wayne said the practice of a PAC paying its organizer for work and other seemingly personal purposes “can concern the public.” So, after the Tuttle story appeared, the ethics commission sent a proposed bill to lawmakers in 2015 that would have banned PACs from paying any legislators who held leadership positions in the PAC.

The bill said that “if a Legislator is a principal officer or treasurer of a political action committee or is one of the individuals primarily responsible for raising contributions or making decisions for the political action committee, the committee may not compensate the legislator or a member of the legislator’s immediate family or household for services provided to the committee.”

The Legislature passed the bill, but Republican Gov. Paul LePage vetoed it, and the Legislature did not override his veto. LePage’s veto message said that the legislation provided “merely form-over-substance changes that do nothing to enhance or strengthen the (campaign finance) reporting laws.”

Although the bill had earlier been approved by the Legislature with strong bipartisan support, the override vote followed party lines, with all but two Republicans, Sens. Roger Katz of Augusta and Tom Saviello of Wilton, voting to sustain the governor’s veto, and all Democrats voting to overturn it.

The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service based in Augusta. Email: [email protected]. Web: www.pinetreewatchdog.org.