It’s clear that Michaud faces a significant LGBT fundraising gap. Gay donors missing history in Maine

Michael Michaud is poised to make history: Leading Maine’s gubernatorial race six weeks before Election Day, the Democratic congressman would be the first openly gay candidate ever to become governor of a state.

Michaud, who came out as gay in a newspaper column last November, has gotten there with precious little help from the nation’s most elite LGBT donors and professional activists.


For all the formal endorsements he has collected in his quest for the governorship, Michaud has been conspicuously shortchanged by many of the wealthiest and most influential gay donors in Democratic politics. Far from becoming a pathbreaking cause célèbre, he has plainly not enjoyed the overpowering financial support of the community that helped fuel President Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012 and made Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin the first openly gay senator in history.

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Dozens of prominent gay bundlers for Obama’s campaign, including Evercore Partners’ Charles Myers and Newsweb’s Fred Eychaner, have given nothing to the Maine lawmaker, according to the most recent state finance records. Gay and straight Hollywood kingpins who have bankrolled marriage equality lawsuits, including producers Bruce Cohen and Rob Reiner, have kept their checkbooks closed.

Of the 32 activists and donors who sit on the board of the Human Rights Campaign, only one has donated to the man currently positioned to become America’s only gay governor. Wealthy Colorado gay rights activist Tim Gill has maxed out to Michaud, but he is an exception that helps prove the rule.

It’s a startling oversight on the part of a community renowned within the Democratic coalition for its political energy and fundraising prowess. More than anything, Democrats and LGBT leaders say, it’s an illustration of the short shrift progressive donors typically give to state-level elections — as well as Michaud’s own status as a new arrival within the gay political community.

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Locked now in a close race against firebrand Republican Gov. Paul LePage and center-left independent Eliot Cutler, a wealthy attorney, Michaud says he’s encouraged by the “grass-roots support” of gay Mainers and more modest donors whose names don’t show up in Forbes.

In an insular state where outsiders are sometimes referred to as “people from away,” Michaud said in a weekend interview that local support means more than anything in a race like this one.

“Our focus has been in Maine,” Michaud said, rejecting the notion that some national liberals have overlooked the significance of the race. “We’ve heard story after story from individuals both inside the state and outside the state that it really made a big difference in their lives. It is historic and it already has made a big difference.”

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Steve Elmendorf — who chairs the board of the Victory Fund, a political committee that raises money for gay candidates — said Michaud was “not a well-known figure in the community, obviously, because he wasn’t out” prior to running for governor. The influential D.C. lobbyist said it would be significant to notch a win in Michaud’s rural, relatively traditional state.

“He’s becoming better known, and I think you’ll see more people, as we head into the fall, giving him money,” said Elmendorf, who has contributed $3,000 to Michaud. “He’s from a blue-collar, rural background. For the LGBT movement to be successful, that kind of story is what we’re going to have to replicate in a lot of places.”

On paper, Michaud commands support from a list of prominent pro-LGBT advocacy groups, including the HRC, LPAC and the Victory Fund, the last of which has bundled a considerable sum for the congressman’s campaign.

As a matter of dollars and cents, it’s clear that Michaud faces a significant LGBT fundraising gap. From a list of about 170 LGBT and gay rights-oriented activists and donors compiled by POLITICO — Obama bundlers, board members and donors to major gay rights groups and political action committees — Michaud has collected only $19,600.

That averages out to about $114 per donor (Michaud’s campaign announced in July that the average donation from all contributors was about $78.)

When Baldwin ran for Senate in 2012, the total was almost 10 times — $170,700, or nearly $1,000 per person.

The deficit, according to Michaud supporters and LGBT operatives, is a function of several factors that have all converged in Maine: Liberal donors are usually less interested in state elections than in federal elections, unlike their conservative counterparts. And Maine is no longer a prime gay-rights battleground, with same-sex marriage and other LGBT legal protections firmly ensconced there as the law of the land.

Most important, Michaud himself is in some ways an unlikely candidate to emerge as a history-making figure for gay Americans. A former mill worker best known for his work on veterans’ issues, the Democrat hasn’t spent his six terms in Washington cultivating gay donors or wooing national LGBT groups in anticipation of a statewide campaign.

When he revealed his own orientation in a Portland Press Herald op-ed last year, even some of Washington’s most wired gay operatives were surprised at the revelation. Today, Michaud remains “a little halting and awkward” as well as “extremely genuine” when he talks about his personal journey in private events, according to one supporter who has heard him speak several times.

Richard Holt, a Houston-based business consultant who bundled contributions for Obama, said he first became aware of Michaud thanks to his op-ed last fall. He’s met with him about half a dozen times since then and considers Michaud “phenomenal” — but acknowledges there’s less donor enthusiasm for the race than there would be for a gubernatorial election in “Texas, a large, economically driven state in the middle of the country, [or] California.”

Michaud himself is an understated figure, happy to embrace his status as a historic candidate but emphasizing regularly that his agenda and aspirations for Maine are largely distinct from his sexual identity. (His coming-out column was titled: “Yes, I’m gay. Now let’s get our state back on track.” On his campaign website, neither Michaud’s bio nor his policy page on “Equality and Civil Rights” mentions the fact he’s gay.)

“I would say I’m an out gay man, I’m proud of who I am, but it’s not my defining characteristic. I’m a businessman, a husband, a father,” said Holt, who has donated $1,500 to Michaud. “That’s how [Michaud] carries himself.”

Campaign manager Matt McTighe, who led the successful referendum campaign for gay marriage in Maine, acknowledged the race has been something less than a lightning rod for LGBT financial support nationally.

He cautioned that there’s more support for Michaud among gay donors than meets the eye — they’re just the type of donors who may previously have sent a few hundred dollars to marriage equality campaigns elsewhere in New England, rather than five- or six-figure checks to a pro-Obama super PAC.

“Because in Maine, we’re lucky enough to have passed so many of these LGBT protections, I think there’s potentially less interest than if we were electing an openly gay governor in a state where we haven’t tapped into that before,” McTighe allowed. “I think that’s a reason why there’s less urgency.”

If Michaud can’t draw on an array of deep relationships with national LGBT rainmakers, he has been making up for lost time in the current race. He addressed the Victory Fund’s annual fundraising brunch this year and has addressed events for the group Equality Maine.

It is perhaps a curious sign of the gay rights movement’s success that in 2014, it is even an option for donors and activists to overlook Michaud’s race. Meghan Stabler, an HRC board member who raised money for Obama in 2012, said in an email that Michaud’s race was “not on my radar from here in Texas.”

At least inside Maine, Michaud and his team say they’re certain that his stature as a trailblazing candidate has left an impression with voters. The candidate described the experience of business owners coming up to him and sharing their own experiences with family members coming out. Starting after the Press Herald op-ed last year, Michaud has received a stream of appreciative letters from Mainers that has continued throughout the race — proof, in the campaign’s view, that any national complacency toward the race isn’t mirrored on the local level.

“I too am gay, but I’m not out to the people at work. I’ve only ever told one other person,” one voter wrote to Michaud shortly after his announcement, identifying himself as a worker in a shipyard. “I have a lot of friends here, but none of them know I’m gay … Ever since I read your letter I’ve been thinking I might tell them. If you can do it maybe there is hope for guys like us.”