Fearing outside ads, King raises serious cash for U.S. Senate race in Maine

Angus King, the independent candidate and undisputed frontrunner in the race to replace retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe here in Maine, has been aggressively raising campaign money. While his rivals thus far have depended on in-state donors -- the same suspects you'd expect in a gubernatorial contest or perhaps a Congressional primary -- King has been working the big leagues, and even reported his first "bundler" recently.

As my story in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram shows, the King campaign is motivated by the fear that outside interests will swamp Maine's inexpensive airwaves with negative ads, and that they will need the means to respond. They're not paranoid. Even here in the summer doldrums, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week purchased $400,000 in such ads at local television stations -- almost half as much money as King has raised in half a year of fundraising.

If you can't get enough of my writing on Maine Senatorial politics, I also had this profile of Sen. Susan Collins' mentor and fiance, Tom Daffron, in the Telegram.