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AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — The Maine Republican Party's executive director told a state ethics commission that he alone was responsible for running an anonymous website that published articles Democrats said slandered their unsuccessful local candidate.
The state ethics commission's staff in a memo released Friday said GOP executive director Jason Savage denied using his party's resources to fund the Maine Examiner website.
The staff said it would be up to ethics commission members to decide next Thursday whether to open a formal investigation into whether the GOP violated campaign finance law.
Savage didn't respond to a request for comment Friday but has denied any violations.
Maine Democratic Party Chairman Phil Bartlett has called for Savage to apologize, or resign.
The staff memo said an investigation could look into whether Savage himself posted Maine Examiner stories on the GOP's Facebook page, and whether such activity would require a campaign finance report.
There's a media exemption to campaign finance reporting requirements, but they don't apply to parties or individuals.
The Maine Democratic Party asked the ethics commission to investigate the Republican connection to the anonymous website. The party accused the Maine Examiner of undermining Lewiston mayoral candidate Ben Chin, who lost a Dec. 12 runoff.
Party members also accused a GOP spokesman of lying when he contended the Republican Party did not know who was behind the website.
Savage said the Maine Examiner didn't need to submit campaign finance reports because he is the website's sole owner and because the site published news stories, commentaries, and editorials. His attorneys have told ethics commission staff that he ran the website in his free time, and that the total operating cost was $74 for web domain registration.
The Maine Examiner "is a personal project of Jason Savage and is not related to his work for the Maine Republican Party," Josh Tardy and Colton Gross, lawyers representing Savage and the Maine Examiner, told ethics commission executive director Jonathan Wayne in a Feb. 12 letter.
The Democrats slammed Savage's actions.
"Jason Savage is the heart of the Maine Republican Party, and he created this misleading content with the singular goal of using his party's apparatus to amplify it," Bartlett said. "He did so deceitfully, under the cloak of secrecy, and with the intent to mislead Maine people."
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