Not so long ago, a major retailer tried secretly to overthrow the government of a small town in the cherry-growing reaches of northern Michigan. It was caught in the act—but let off the hook without serious repercussions by a state official who had received large campaign contributions from the company. And now that state official is in a close race for the U.S. Senate, getting more financial support from the company’s executives—and no questions about the episode.

It’s a remarkable tale of corporate might and small-town democracy in the Citizens United era, which I wrote about for Harper’s magazine in 2012. Meijer, Inc.—a family-owned, Grand Rapids–based chain of grocery and discount general merchandise big-box stores with more than 200 branches and 75,000 employees across the Midwest and $14 billion in revenue—wanted to build a new store as part of a massive new development in a hay field in Acme, a town of 4,375 people just northeast of Traverse City. Townspeople balked at the scale of the proposed project and in 2004 elected a new town board that sought a redrawing of the plans. Meijer sued the new board members individually for unlimited damages, claiming that they had a conflict of interest because they had previously belonged to a local citizens group opposed to the project. The board members stood firm—and one of them, a conservative outdoorsman, fired back with a lawsuit of his own, starting an extended legal battle that had Meijer and its allies haggling with him in court until his death from cancer in 2011.

Meanwhile, in late 2006, Meijer began secretly bankrolling a campaign to replace the town board in a recall election. It paid a public relations firm in Grand Rapids to run the very elaborate, months-long campaign, which was made to appear as if it was being led by a handful of pro-Meijer residents in Acme. The p.r. firm developed voter lists, created a Web site, composed campaign literature, and edited letters to the editor. (A few decisions were left up to the locals: one draft of a letter to voters that was written by the p.r. firm was signed, “Acme Citizens Who Care Committee (or whatever ballot committee name you choose.”) The recall fell short, and a year later, the ruse was exposed, thanks to the lawyer of the board member who filed suit against Meijer and aggressive reporting by the Traverse City Record-Eagle—which was punished with the loss of more than $250,000 in annual revenue when Meijer, its largest advertiser, yanked its Sunday ad circular.

Meijer went into damage-control mode, admitting that it had spent tens of thousands of dollars directly on the recall race and on an earlier Acme referendum on a big-box development moratorium, in which Meijer had narrowly prevailed. The spending had not been disclosed, as the law required, and the spending in the recall campaign was a clear violation of Michigan’s law banning direct corporate spending on campaigns. “We apologize for the violation of trust these actions caused,” the company said.

Grand Traverse County prosecutor Al Schneider, a straight-shooting Republican, opened an investigation into felony violations of campaign finance law, which would have allowed him to subpoena Meijer executives, including co-chairman Hank Meijer, the grandson of its founder. But in May 2008, the company reached a “conciliation agreement” with Michigan’s secretary of state. The company agreed to pay the state $190,138 in fines for its spending on the two elections, which the state determined had totaled more than $100,000. The agreement’s crucial line, though, was on its last page: the fine would “constitute a complete bar to any further action against Meijer, Inc.”