$1.7M raised to influence vote on bear baiting

More than $1.7 million has been raised to sway voters on Question 2, the referendum to ban bear trapping and bear hunting with bait or dogs, according to campaign finance reports filed Tuesday.

About three-quarters of all the money reported thus far – $1,261,243.31 – was raised by Maine’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Council, a coalition formed primarily of hunting groups to defeat the referendum.

Maine Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting, the group behind Question 2, had raised $430,043.91 by the Sept. 30 filing deadline. Maine Hunters for Fair Bear Hunting, a smaller group working for passage of the referendum, has raised just over $10,000, spokesman Cecil Gray said Wednesday.

Both of the large groups reported taking cash donations or in-kind contributions from out-of-state groups – the Humane Society of the United States and Fund for Animals on one side and the U.S. Sportsman’s Alliance, Safari Club International and National Rifle Association on the other.

Throughout the campaign, Edie Leary, spokeswoman for the anti-ban coalition, has accused her opponents of working on behalf of national animal rights groups, citing the large donations by the national Humane Society to the Maine campaign.

Wednesday, Bob Fisk, spokesman for Maine Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting responded by pointing out that a third of the $470,619.43 his opponents raised between July 14 and Sept. 30 came from out-of-state groups, including several from states where bear baiting, trapping or hounding is illegal.

“These are the groups supported by Ted Nugent and the extremist trophy hunting organizations, not by rank-and-file Maine sportsmen,” Fisk said in a statement released Wednesday.

Leary responded Wednesday, saying that neither group could fund a campaign at this level without turning to national partners. Yet 66 percent of the 13,473 groups or individuals that have donated to Maine’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Council hail from in state, she said.

Leary and the coalition also went on the offensive Wednesday, raising questions about how Maine Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting paid for recent television advertising. This week’s campaign finance reports on the group’s fund raising and spending suggested that the Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting did not have enough income on hand to cover large ad buys since the Sept. 30 filing deadline, she said. Leary voiced her suspicion that out-of-state organizations paid for those ads after the filing deadline and that Mainers won’t find out who it was until less than a week before Election Day.

“Someone is paying for these ads,” Leary said Wednesday. “The core issue is: ‘Who is running this campaign?'”

For her part, Leary said the coalition had spent $396,000 on ads by Sept. 30, and another $280,000 since then – all raised from cash donations, except for a $15,000 in-kind contribution from International Paper through Ursus Productions.

Fisk said Wednesday that he was not aware of funds being targeted specifically by the Humane Society of the United States for ads, adding that the budgeting has not been completed.

“We’re still piecing that together, how we end up paying for all our TV ads,” Fisk said. “We’re confident that, all things considered, we’ll have the money to get our message out.”

Wayne Pacelle, national spokesman from the Humane Society said Wednesday that his group has been happy to donate funds and expertise to Maine Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting from the start of this campaign, in hopes of giving a voice to its Maine members – who are three times as plentiful as the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine membership.

All three groups involved with Question 2 are continuing to raise money and predict that advertising on the bear issue will approach the $2 million mark during the next few weeks. The final campaign finance reports of the season will be filed just before Election Day, on Wednesday, Oct. 27.