Bonus: It’s also why Trey Jackson is either lying if he says he wouldn’t have done the same, or he’s a bad choice to represent Maine, in particular
We’ve posted a few items about the ProPublica story on Susan Collins taking donations from defense pork john Martin Kao—and the fact that a slew of other candidates, including boatloads of Democrats did, too—and apparently Collins having done Kao’s company’s bidding as a Senator.
Ultimately, investigators should look at all of these recipients to ascertain if there was any funny business going on. Collins included, though we doubt they'll find anything.
But while they do, it’s worth noting the big reason why Collins would have been advocating for funding benefiting Navatek in the first place—and why Trey Jackson is either lying or a bad choice for Maine if he says he wouldn’t have engaged in it, too.
Here’s how.
Back in the day, Kao’s firm—Navatek—had a Maine office that employed about 22 people. Not a big number, but also not insignificant number in a relatively low population state like Maine.
Notably, that base was in Portland, Maine, which is also super-close to New Hampshire. As an aside, this probably explains why Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was taking money from Kao, too—a lot of people from the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, area commute to Portland for work at job tied to, well, seafaring including US Naval-related gigs, and New Hampshire Democrats are pretty reliable advocates for these kinds of “job creation on the taxpayer dime” schemes, too.
Many of the people employed at Navatek’s base of operations around then were recent graduates from the University of Maine.
And subsequent Navy contracts—like the kind Collins was publicly advocating for, but undoubtedly Shaheen was privately supporting, too—were intended to facilitate expansions that were expected to grow Navatek’s workforce in Portland and Bangor to as many as 120 workers. 120 jobs is a fairly big deal in a state like Maine.
Here’s a press release from Collins about this—at the time, the jobs projection was a total of 50 in Portsmouth, but the basic trend, Navatek gets funding, more jobs are created in Maine, is evident.
Bringing federal money back to a state to grow jobs may strike libertarians and opponents of defense pork as shocking and disgusting.
But what is shocking and disgusting to libertarians usually isn’t a great barometer of what the general public finds salacious (hence no one blinking an eye when the national debt was sitting at $39 trillion).
This kind of thing is pretty much the bread and butter of most US Senators, because a ton of voters want and expect it. Collins is especially known for bringing federal money home to her state. (Side note: Rand Paul’s Dad, Ron Paul, was also well-known for this; he would just insert his earmarks and rely on other Members of Congress to ensure the bills into which they were inserted became law, while taking optically-convenient “no” votes).
Unless Jackson is saying he wouldn’t advocate for that funding or the related jobs as a US Senator, he’s lying when he’s suggesting that he wouldn’t have engaged in the same advocacy as Collins did.
And if he is saying he wouldn’t have advocated for that funding, then he’s going to do a bad job of what has kept Mainers sending Collins back to the Senate term after term after term: She keeps money flowing to the state.
Now, as a federal contractor, Navatek should not have been able to have made any of the donations identified—or any donations to Jackson, frankly, should he win this race. We don’t know who Collins should return that money to (not Kao, since he’s pretty clearly a federal criminal in very deep doo-doo now, and that has been demonstrated in contexts unrelated to Collins). But she for sure should have refunded those donations when made, and now should find some solid Maine charity to gift them to.
But Jackson should be pressed on whether he wouldn’t advocate for jobs like Navatek was creating, or whether he would, even though it would entail him doing the bidding of a company obviously trying to steer a lot of federal taxpayer cash to itself.
Or, is the issue that he’s just saying he’s better at campaign paperwork than Collins?
Note: If he is, it’s worth noting he still hasn’t filed the personal financial disclosure that was due after he announced his candidacy and was gifted the Democratic nomination; let’s see if he gets around to it by the time his extension from the ethics office runs out—that’s October 5.
Bottom line: Neither Collins nor Jackson is Rand Paul, and Maine ain’t Kentucky. People there like, and expect, their Senator to bring home the bacon. Collins does.
Jackson knows it; that’s why he’s so heavily backed legislation like this “Buy American and benefit Maine business” endeavor before. That’s a regulatory, not a direct funding, subsidy for Maine Navy-related employers.
But it’s essentially the same thing Collins is doing, except unlike her, even as Senate President, he couldn’t get it turned into actual law, so the attendant intended effect on job creation has been null.
That’s a point to Collins on results, if not on paperwork management.
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