CasinosNO! outfunded 6 to 1

Vote Yes on 2 for Maine put six times more money into its campaign in the last two weeks of the 3rd quarter than opponents CasinosNO! received all year.

The two groups are on either side of Question 2, which proposes a casino in Oxford County.

Since Vote Yes on 2 for Maine registered as a political action committee with the Ethics Commission Sept. 17, it spent $552,028 promoting the casino effort, all of the funds coming from Olympia Gaming in Las Vegas, the owners of the project.

The money went to advertising on most of Maine’s television and radio networks, and in all of the major daily newspapers. They also spent $197,450 on professional services. This included $75,000 to Atlantic Strategies in Fairfield for campaign consulting, $78,948 to CDM Communications in Portland for ads and public relations, $13,500 to spokeswoman Pat LaMarche for public relations consulting, and $30,000 to a Florida company for consulting.

LaMarche could not be reached immediately for comment. Watch for updates this weekend.

CasinosNO! has raised $85,059 all year, $77,700 of that in the 3rd quarter. The group was left with $47,379 cash on hand.

Of that, $65,000 came from the Gorman family, which owns LL Bean. The company has funded CasinosNO! efforts in the past.

Dennis Bailey, president of CasinosNO! said he didn’t want to reach out to the Gormans again, but they were offended when officials from Vote Yes on 2 for Maine criticized CasinosNO! for taking money from them in the past.

“I was actually reluctant to return to the same well for donations, but after the creeps from Las Vegas showed up in Maine and ran radio ads attacking LL Bean, the most respected business in Maine if not the US, they quickly understood what kind of neighbor these characters would be, and they were back in the game,” Bailey said.

Bailey said the casino proponents are being ripped off by the ad agencies on fees, and noted that the casino proponents hadn’t spent any money on polling.

“It explains their attacks on CasinosNO! in their ads and attacks on LL Bean,” Bailey said in an e-mail. “If they’d done some polling and message testing, they’d find that LL Bean has about 98 percent approval ratings and would never attack a venerable business. They’re letting their emotions get in the way of rational political campaigning.”