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Maurice T. Cunningham of Damariscotta is a retired political scientist and author of “Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.” His Substack is “Sinister Interest & Evil in Every Shape: A Dark Money Reader.“

On Sept. 22, ProPublica published allegations of a pay-to-play operation encompassing Sen. Susan Collins’ 2020 political campaign, a super PAC supporting her and millions of dollars in defense contracts routed to a donor company.

These allegations are serious, but also amount to garden variety favor-trading. I’m far more concerned with the Collins donors who threaten to end American democracy.

ProPublica describes a late 2019 meeting in which Martin Kao, the CEO of an engineering company named Navatek, met with Scott Reed, head of a Collins super PAC. Reed proposed a $500,000 donation in exchange for Collins’ guarantee for millions in federal funding.

Kao proposed he use “dark money” to make the contribution and that Collins should know who gave the donation. Reed agreed. Navatek then passed a $150,000 donation through a shell corporation to Collins’ super PAC. A few weeks later, Collins’ office helped secure millions of dollars in contracts for Navatek. The company never produced any useful technology.

FBI agents were poised to extend the investigation into the super PAC deal and other allegations in 2021, but the Trump administration gutted the office that manages public corruption cases in retribution for its scrutiny of Trump himself. That killed any inquiry into Navatek and Collins. The allegations have been denied by Collins’ office and her campaign connections.

When it comes to political money, I follow what’s known as Kinsley’s Law: in politics the scandal is not what is illegal, but what is legal. 

For example, in 2024 Elon Musk spent over $290 million to help elect Donald Trump. Musk, since then connected to a Nazi salutes and support of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party in Germany, was rewarded with his government-program-slashing post at “DOGE.” Notwithstanding his affected anti-government passions, Musk’s wealth has reportedly been built with as much as $38 billion in government contracts and subsidies. 

Musk has pledged $100 million-$120 million for Republican campaigns this year, including to support Collins. 

Leonard Leo held a fundraiser for Sen. Collins at his Maine home in 2019. ProPublica has also reported that Leo was the key figure advising President Trump on his three far-right Roberts Court picks: Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Leo also helped pick or confirm the other three right-wing justices: Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. We owe our billionaire-dominated campaign finance system to the Roberts Court’s decision in Citizens United. 

Working with $1.6 billion from conservative billionaire Barre Seid, Leo has turned his attention to transforming American life. He complains that his version of Catholicism is under attack from “vile and immoral current-day barbarians, secularists and bigots … whom the devil can easily take advantage of.” He intends “to crush liberal dominance.”

Peter Thiel is co-founder of Palantir, a data mining and electronic surveillance firm. Its government contracts are so extensive that it has become a virtual partner of the government. The company’s contracts with ICE alone run to more than $200 million. Palantir employees have given $117,000 to Collins’ related political committees. Three Palantir figures made the list of 97 billionaires who contributed to Collins committees in 2025-26. In 2019, Thiel wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Grifters like Kao are a blemish on democracy. Far worse are authoritarians who have the means to influence the president, House members, and senators and the determination to cripple American democracy.