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Jordan Wood is a former Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House and previously served as chief of staff to Rep. Katie Porter of California and as vice president of End Citizens United. He lives in Auburn. 

I’ve worked in politics for nearly 15 years, serving in government as a chief of staff to a member of Congress, running as a candidate for Congress myself, and leading anti-corruption groups. I am stunned by ProPublica’s reporting on the pay-to-play scheme and normalized corruption of Sen. Susan Collins’ office.

Every campaign fundraiser learns a cardinal rule on day one. If a potential donor brings up a contribution in connection with an official action that an officeholder could take, whether that’s voting for a specific bill, signing a letter or helping constituents, you must reject the donation. It’s illegal, even if the member would have taken that action anyway.

Here is what ProPublica found. Collins’ office steered millions in Navy contracts to Navatek, a defense contractor, while her campaign and her super PAC collected money from its CEO, Martin Kao. And when Kao’s money broke the law, the people around her didn’t reject it. They helped hide it. Twice.

The first violation: straw donations. Using other people’s names to get around contribution limits is a straw donor scheme, and people go to prison for it. The emails show Kao giving above the maximum donation to Collins’ reelection campaign, and instructing the campaign to falsely attribute the excess money as coming from his father. “This is perfect,” her finance director, Amy Abbott, replied.

The second violation: Collins’ super PAC. Even after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, federal contractors like Kao’s company, Navatek, cannot give to super PACs. Yet Scott Reed, a veteran Republican operative who has run Collins’ super PACs since 2020 and is a longtime friend of her husband, asked Kao for $500,000. Kao offered to make the donation through a shell company that would be “very difficult to get any background info on,” to get around the federal contractor ban.

Reed replied that would be “very smart.” But Kao wanted to be sure Collins would know it came from him. Reed allegedly assured him the senator would know who was behind the donation, and his staff asked for Kao’s phone number so the senator could thank him. Weeks after Kao’s check cleared, he met with her office and emailed Navatek executives: “Total of $32M will be supported.” 

Sen. Collins is pushing a lie that the donor scheme uncovered rests only on the word of Kao, a convicted criminal who used Congress and taxpayer dollars to enrich himself. She also claims the Biden Justice Department cleared her in 2021. That is another lie. ProPublica uncovered evidence that FBI agents were still examining her staff and super PAC in early 2025, reviewing emails implicating the most senior people in Collins’ political operation. This investigation ended for one reason: Donald Trump purged the unit.

It is telling that nobody in Collins’ orbit faced consequences for these actions. Abbott is still her finance director; she’s also the wife of Steve Abbott, Collins’ campaign manager and former chief of staff. Reed is still running a single-candidate super PAC supporting Collins.

This isn’t a partisan witch hunt. Kao’s confession named more than a dozen lawmakers from both parties. Any Democrat who traded official actions for campaign cash deserves the same consequences as any Republican. The investigation should be reopened, independently if necessary. The Senate Ethics Committee should act now. 

We need a Congress that will pass laws to force super PACs and dark money groups to disclose their donors, match small-dollar donations with public funds like we do here in Maine, and stop super PACs from operating as arms of the campaigns they support. Susan Collins has voted to block these reforms. Troy Jackson has pledged to champion them.

I grew up in Lewiston, the son of a teacher and pastor. The people I grew up with don’t have shell companies or know super PAC fundraisers. We expect the people we send to Washington to work for us, not big-money donors.