Billionaire Bankrolling Anti-Platner PAC Gutted Maine Mill Towns

Over the weekend, new FEC filings revealed a billionaire-backed super PAC supporting Republican Sen. Susan Collins has started running attack ads against Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner. Pine Tree Results is being funded by a litany of ultrawealthy donors, including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman ($2 million); Elliott Management CEO Paul Singer ($1 million); Reyes Holdings executives ($1 million); and Palantir CEO Alex Karp ($100,000).

Platner responded, in part, by noting that Collins’s billionaire-backers are all coming from out of state, with no local interest in Maine. That’s mostly true. On June 27, 2025, Blackstone’s Schwarzman gave $2 million to the Pine Tree Super PAC. The next day, Collins cast a critical vote to move Trump’s “Big Beautiful” tax bill forward in the Senate, a bill that was packed with giveaways to the private equity industry. (She eventually voted against final passage, as she often does when there are enough Republican votes to pass legislation without her.)

One benefactor does have a Maine connection—though it’s a sordid one. That donor is Apollo Global Management’s billionaire CEO and founder Marc Rowan, a giant in the world of private equity who has faced scrutiny for his links to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Rowan contributed $50,000 so far of the $2 million already dedicated to the anti-Platner campaign, and has been a major backer of AIPAC in recent years.

From 2006 to 2020, Apollo Management ran two of Maine’s largest paper mills into the ground, bankrupting them both, selling off their carcasses for scraps, and eliminating more than 1,000 jobs in Bucksport and Jay. That wasn’t a failure on the part of the private equity firm, which is able to profit by extracting wealth from healthy businesses through a process of stacking them with debt, filing for bankruptcy, and looting their assets, including pensions promised to workers.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/susan-collins-pac-graham-platner-marc-rowan-apollo-global-management-maine-paper-mills