A Republican-affiliated super PAC is having a little trouble finding Maine on a map.
The Defending Main Street super PAC spent thousands of dollars on an attack ad to audiences thousands of miles away from the Maine Senate race it was targeting.
The ad hit Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson on the issue of taxes and cost of living in the state.
“Maine can’t afford Troy Jackson and all his taxes,” the ad said.
“It’s clear these people don’t know anything about Maine.”
The group, which describes itself as “most effective independent expenditure organization supporting the governing wing of the Republican Party,” paid for the ad to attack Jackson, who’s mounting a challenge to incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins. Both candidates have made cost of living a central plank of their campaigns in the run-up to the midterm election on November 3.
The only problem with the ad in question: The group paid for the video ad to show more than 1 million times in the wrong Portland.
Rather than being delivered to audiences in Portland, Maine, the state’s largest city, the ad was shown to digital audiences more than 3,000 miles and two time zones away in Portland, Oregon, according to data from Google.
The mix-up may be embarrassing for the super PAC, which is oriented around electing so-called moderate Republicans like Collins, but likely spared voters in Maine from the latest wave in a deluge of ad spending in the state, according to Andy O’Brien, a political operative who supports Jackson.
“We have billionaires with no connection to Maine spending millions of dollars to buy Susan Collins the election, so it’s pretty hilarious to see them throwing money at the wrong Portland,” O’Brien told The Intercept. “It’s clear these people don’t know anything about Maine, because they’re directing their ads to the wrong Portland.”
“I’m glad they’re wasting their money in Oregon and not continuing to waste it in Maine.”
Representatives of the Jackson’s and Collins’s campaigns and a spokesperson for Defending Main Street did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The group is affiliated with Republican Main Street Partnership, a nonprofit group that counts Collins among its nine members in the Senate. Republican Main Street Partnership was initially aimed at supporting moderate Republicans that has, along with much of the rest of the GOP, moved to the right in recent years.
Busy Maine Street
The race between Collins and Jackson — a longtime Maine politico who stepped in to replace Graham Platner after Platner dropped out amid allegations of sexual assault — has become one of the most high-profile races in the country in the run-up to the midterms.
The campaign has helped make Maine one of the top locations for political spending this cycle, according to the Portland Press Herald.
The Defending Main Street ad, however, did not have the impact its sponsors might have hoped. The ad buy first came to light after an X user reported seeing multiple anti-Troy Jackson ads in Portland, Oregon.
“I’ve gotten 5 anti-Troy Jackson ads in the last 24 hours. I choose to believe they mixed up Portlands,” wrote the user, who goes by the name Lillian Belle and posts about progressive politics in Oregon. “Hearing I’m not alone lol.”
That suspicion appears to be borne out by data from Google Ads Transparency Center, which shows Defending Main Street dropped between $20,000 and $25,000 to place the 30-second ad in hundreds of ZIP codes across Oregon and the state of Washington between October 8 and October 11.
O’Brien, the Maine political operative, said, “At least now Portland, Oregon, residents can enjoy some of the crap we’ve been seeing every single day.”
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