AUGUSTA – With the legislative session over, the power brokers of Maine politics are, as expected, far away from the State House this particular late summer day.

Downstairs, a few members of the governor’s staff breeze through the Hall of Flags on their way to and from their boss’s office.

Upstairs, there’s not a lobbyist to be found wooing lawmakers, who have scattered to their respective hometowns until the Legislature reconvenes in January.

When the powers that be do return next year, however, they could be joined by a new political force with as much money and power as any currently in the state.

“Obviously with money comes a certain … political presence,” Penobscot Nation Chief Barry Dana said recently of the prospect of his tribe and the partnering Passamaquoddy improving their political fortunes in Augusta should voters in November approve a potentially lucrative casino deal for the two tribes.

“I suppose we could either be totally feared or totally liked,” continued Dana, wondering aloud how Maine’s political establishment would respond to a newly economically advantaged tribe with the potential to fill campaign coffers of state and federal decision makers and to hire the state’s most influential lobbyists and attorneys.

The prospect carried a warning from some of the state’s most seasoned politicos, who questioned whether it would be the tribes or the casino’s wealthy investors calling the shots.

“The potential political power of that interest group and its financiers is almost incalculable in terms of our state,” said former gubernatorial hopeful David Flanagan, who was among the first candidates to reject the casino idea.

He also was the only candidate to openly cite what he called the “undue political influence” its operators would wield as a reason for his opposition.

“It’s a recipe for disaster,” Flanagan said.

Should Mainers approve the casino resort in November, the tribes stand to split $50 million each year, based on supporters’ estimates. Another $100 million is expected go to the state each year.

Tribal leaders long ago determined how they would spend their share of the revenue. The money is destined, they say, for health, education and cultural programs for the tribes, whose members lag far behind state averages in almost every economic and educational measure.

“That’s going to be a chunk of change right there,” said Dana, who as of last week said he had given little thought to more political uses for the money.

But based on the experience of tribes with successful casinos elsewhere in the country, candidates and causes at both the federal and state levels could gain a wealthy contributor should the revenues for a Maine casino meet expectations.

Maine to Madison

“We’ve become known as a big player,” Ho-Chunk Nation spokeswoman Anne Thundercloud said of her tribe’s reputation in Wisconsin, where 11 tribes and 15 Indian casinos are scattered throughout the state.

Last year, the tribe, which operates three casinos in central Wisconsin, gave more than $514,000 to federal candidates and political action committees, placing the Ho-Chunk among the nation’s top three tribal “soft money” contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research firm that tracks campaign spending.

Soft money is a term used to describe what had been – before 2002 campaign finance reforms – unregulated and unlimited donations to political parties.

Much of the Ho-Chunk money – $500,000 – went to the Democratic National Committee about a week before the 2002 Wisconsin gubernatorial election, a contest in which candidates split on a key issue for the Ho-Chunk: whether to enter into a long-term agreement with the tribes to operate their casinos. At the time, the tribes had to negotiate a new deal with the state every five years.

Democrat Jim Doyle supported and later signed the long-term compacts, after prevailing in the election. But not without the tribe’s indirect help. Within days of the tribe’s hefty donation to the DNC, the committee sent about $1 million back to its state committee to help Democratic candidates including Doyle.

While both the tribe and the governor’s office denied any quid pro quo, the situation exemplified the power – whether real or perceived – of the once-poor tribe from Black River Falls, population 3,600.

“They’re a force to be reckoned with,” said Wisconsin Rep. Terry Musser, a Republican who heads a special legislative task force on state-tribal relations.

While many in Musser’s party have found themselves at odds with the tribes of late, the veteran lawmaker from the heart of Ho-Chunk country said he has been convinced that the state has more to gain by accepting the tribe’s sovereign status than constantly fighting it.

“I think the state and its people have finally acknowledged that … we can either keep butting heads or sit down and talk,” he said.

A seat at the table

To that end, Musser, a lawmaker for nearly 20 years, sponsored a 2001 bill that would have allowed the tribes to seat one nonvoting delegate in the state assembly.

The bill was based on a Maine statute, unique in the nation, that allows the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy each one nonvoting delegate to the state House of Representatives. Maine’s law has been on the books in some form since statehood.

Much to Musser’s dismay, the Wisconsin bill was quickly killed in committee.

Its fate, Musser said, was a function, in part, of an often unspoken perception that the casino-rich tribes already had enough influence in Madison, the state capital, where they can employ dozens of lobbyists.

“It’s a relatively new experience and we’re trying to figure out where this is all going,” Musser said of the sudden political presence of the state’s “Big Three” gaming tribes – the Forest County Potawatomi, the Oneida and the Ho-Chunk. “But I think we’re all learning to ‘play better with others,’ so to speak.”

But playing together doesn’t rule out playing hardball.

In April, it wasn’t an army of lobbyists that reversed the Ho-Chunk’s political fortunes.

“It took a lot of planning and a lot of dollars to make it happen,” Thundercloud said of the effort to defeat a Republican initiative that would have essentially voided the long-term deal signed by Doyle with the Indians by giving the Legislature oversight of any such “perpetual” gaming compacts.

While the Legislature passed the measure, Doyle quickly vetoed it, and the Ho-Chunk leapt into action.

This time, the tribe’s money went toward transporting, outfitting and paying the salaries of several hundred tribal members for the day, who, dressed in matching T-shirts reading “Perpetual Jobs,” packed the capitol rotunda and later the senate gallery as lawmakers considered overriding Doyle’s veto.

The senate fell one vote short of overriding the veto, effectively killing the bill and clearing the way for the Ho-Chunk to operate their casino without renegotiating its deal with the state every five years.

“I’d like to think we had something to do with it,” Thundercloud said.

Sovereignty debated

Back in Maine, the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy have employed similar tactics – minus the big money – to advance their political agenda.

There were no buses or matching T-shirts for the two tribes as scores of their members marched on the State House last year to protest a state court ruling forcing them to turn over documents under the state’s Freedom of Access Act.

But such demonstrations, although attracting media attention, have done little to advance the tribe’s position that they are sovereign nations and exempt from the FOA and many other state laws.

Thus far, that argument hasn’t swayed state lawmakers, who have been lukewarm on legislation exempting the tribes from the act, designed to ensure public access to public records.

But, even without large bank accounts and no voting power in the Legislature, the tribes have prevailed in some political battles in recent months, most notably winning an exemption from the state’s smoking ban in bingo parlors.

“We just had to press our issue and show them it would be financially devastating,” said Rep. Donna Loring, the Penobscot delegate to the Maine House. “It was a case of really believing in what you’re saying.”

While access and persuasion are key elements of politics, so is money, and few dispute that the Maine tribes would command more attention with larger bank accounts and thousands of employees dependent on their business ventures.

But power breeds enemies, and Flanagan is by no means the only critic of Indian casino cash in state and federal politics.

“What [tribes around the country are] doing is buying and selling politicians,” said Elaine Willman, chairwoman of Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, a national group of property rights activists based in Washington state. “They have as much power as they want and so will [the Maine tribes.]”

Groups such as CERA, in general terms, object to federal policy that gives special consideration to the American Indians, which make up less than 1 percent of the nation’s population, in a number of areas including gaming and campaign finance limits.

But tribal supporters say those privileges are well-deserved and the result of hundreds of years of treaties with the federal government. And they scoff at the idea that the tribes, long poverty-stricken, now have “undue influence” on the nation’s political races.

“If we want to talk about undue influence, let’s talk about the influence rich, white businessmen have on the process,” said Joanne Barker, a professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University in California, home to several of the nation’s top tribal donors.

“Let’s talk about what [opponents] are really talking about,” continued Barker, a member of the Oklahoma-based Lenape tribe. “What they’re concerned about is protecting established practices and excluding a different race or class that might finally have some say.”