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The Supreme Court’s Dark Money Man Is Trying to Make It Harder to Vote

Leonard Leo’s network is bankrolling the main donor behind a ballot initiative in Maine that would limit absentee voting and impose voter ID requirements.

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Andrew Perez
Oct 08, 2025
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Leonard Leo on March 11, 2025. Photo by Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union

PORTLAND, Maine – Leonard Leo, the conservative operative who built Donald Trump’s radical right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court, is spending big money to make it harder to vote in Maine, ahead of Susan Collins’s crucial reelection fight next year.

Leo is already a divisive figure in the Pine Tree State: His mansion in the Bar Harbor area has been the site of frequent protests ever since the high court’s conservatives overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal right to an abortion. Neighbors and visitors regularly decry Leo’s influence on US politics and the judiciary, much of which flows through his historic $1.6 billion dark-money slush fund.

Serving as Trump’s first-term judicial adviser, Leo helped select three conservative justices, while his dark money network spent millions on PR campaigns supporting them. Those justices were essential in overturning Roe.

As Maine prepares for a competitive and likely ultra-expensive Senate race next year, in which Democrats will again try to unseat Collins, Maine’s Republican senator, Leo’s dark money network and his allies are bankrolling the main donor behind Question 1, a ballot measure that would change how many Maine residents participate in that election.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, tells Zeteo that Question 1 was “written by people that don’t fully understand Maine elections,” and would create “irregularities” that conflict with how elections are currently administered. “It indicates the influence of dark money and out-of-state interests in drafting the statutory changes,” she says.

‘The Core Leo Playbook’

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