Nearly a hundred billionaires, counting spouses, have given money to Susan Collins. Only a very few have given to Graham Platner, and then in small sums. That contrast sits at the center of an analysis of Maine’s Senate race that the Institute for New Economic Thinking published on June 30, 2026.
The authors are Thomas Ferguson, the institute’s research director and a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston, along with Paul Jorgensen, Matthias Lalisse and Jie Chen. Everything below is their reading of the numbers, not an independent audit.
Two pictures
The piece rests on two figures. The first is adapted from a paper three of the authors published in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics in 2022. It charts how political leaders in the 2016 cycle raised money, sorted by the size of the donors. The totals add up every contribution from the same donor, which is why they look so different from what the authors call “foggy media headcounts” of famous billionaires or comparisons of campaign spending. They describe the method as the closest thing available to an X-ray of big money in elections.
The 2016 picture was stark. Bernie Sanders raised virtually all his money from the two lowest brackets, donors giving less than $200 and below $250. Almost every other leader depended on the top brackets. Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi and Paul Ryan leaned on giant donors, typically those giving more than $100,000. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump did the same, though Trump also drew substantial sums from small donors, a “barbell” pattern the authors call unique.
What the Maine numbers show
For the second figure the team used Federal Election Commission data on the Maine race, with Collins as the Republican incumbent and Platner as her Democratic challenger. They counted money from super PACs and other outside groups, and treated spending against one candidate as spending for the other.
The work was not simple. Seven committees are raising and spending on Collins’s behalf this year, alongside seven more super PACs. Her totals also include contributions from her 2020 run, since senators face voters only every six years and can spend what they have banked. Platner’s figures cover his primary campaign this year. The authors note that the FEC bulk files lag behind, so they pulled the electronic filings themselves on June 12 to 14. Contributions to the principal campaign committee run through May 20, 2026.
Collins, they found, looks like a typical Republican, or like the older Democratic leaders in the first figure. She is heavily dependent on very large donors, and the shape of her donor base is virtually identical whether the 2020 money is included or only 2026. Platner “strikingly resembles Sanders”: he attracts essentially no big money.
Geography splits the two as well. Setting aside gifts below the $200 disclosure threshold, Maine donors supply approximately 20% of Platner’s money. For Collins the share is slightly under 3%. “Not a misprint,” the authors write. Her largest contributors include financiers from private equity and hedge funds, among them Steve Schwarzman of BlackRock, Ken Griffin of Citadel and Larry Ellison of Oracle.
Limits and what comes next
The authors say they take no side in the race. They point to Platner’s push, well ahead of the Democratic primary, that forced out his opponent, the sitting governor, despite controversies over his past. Sanders and other progressives back him; many establishment Democrats dislike him. The authors argue that major media keep printing pieces questioning his character while Collins’s legislative record gets less scrutiny.
They expect more money to arrive, since the contest may decide the balance of power in the Senate. That could change the shape of the distributions, they write, or confirm them.
