AUGUSTA — Two Lewiston men who helped organize a statewide campaign aimed at bringing a casino to that city’s downtown endured a barrage of questions Thursday before the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.

The commission tabled action on the case because it did not hear from all of the witnesses it had hoped to during the nearly five hours of testimony.

At stake is whether Stavros Mendros and Peter Robinson will be fined under the state’s campaign finance laws for allegedly misleading state investigators and the media during and after the failed 2011 vote.

Both said Thursday that they were the ones misled by the campaign’s financial backers, Maryland businessmen Scott Nash and Ryan Hill, who pumped money into the campaign.

Mendros and Robinson said they were never told a third person, Chase Burns, an Oklahoma businessman involved in the gambling industry, contributed $130,000 to the campaign.

“I’ve never heard of Chase Burns,” Robinson said. Mendros said he never learned of Burns’ contributions until Mendros’ lawyer, Mark Walker, told him about it in July.

After obtaining bank records from Nash and Hill, ethics commission investigators learned that Burns also donated money to the PAC.

Burns was linked in June to a gambling scandal involving a yacht in Florida that was purchased to “entertain politicians,” according to reports in the Oklahoman newspaper. Burns has denied any wrongdoing in the scandal, which led to the resignation of Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll in March.

The commission tabled the matter until its next meeting in January because it was unable to take testimony from Nash because of a scheduling conflict at the Maryland facility that hosted its closed-circuit television link to Maine.

If the commission finds Mendros and Robinson knowingly violated state ethics laws, they could face civil penalties of more than $30,000.

Hill appeared before the commission via closed-circuit television link Thursday, offering testimony that countered that of Mendros and Robinson.

Mendros said his biggest concern during the campaign was never where the money was coming from, but that it simply wasn’t coming.

“My concern was, ‘Where the heck was the rest of the money?'” Mendros told the commission Executive Director Jonathan Wayne during questioning Thursday.

Mendros said he was led to believe the campaign’s financial backers were going to contribute $2 million. In the end, they contributed less than $400,000, he said.

Details from an investigation conducted by ethics commission staff and released in October revealed that a pair of political action committees that were managed by Mendros and Robinson misreported the source of campaign donations.

The PACs — Green Jobs for ME and the People of Lewiston-Auburn — “reported that GT Source, a Georgia corporation, was the sole source of $412,000 in contributions,” according to a memo to the commission from its investigative staff. “In fact, GT Source did not contribute any funds to the PACs.”

The July 1 memo said contributions to the campaign, totaling $388,000, came from two Maryland companies and an Oklahoma businessman — all of whom were involved in the casino industry at the time.

While the commission was unable to vote on the issues before them, new details about who knew what and when began to emerge.

Thursday was the first time commission staff named Brent Littlefield as being involved in the casino effort. Littlefield is the top political consultant on Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s election campaigns.

During the failed 2011 casino bid, LePage spoke in opposition to the measure. Littlefield has declined to comment on the issues before the ethics commission and has not been asked to appear before it.

Much of the money collected for the two PACs was paid to Dome Messaging, an Arlington, Va.-based company set up by Littlefield, which purchased television and radio advertising for the casino campaign in Maine.

Thursday’s testimony wound in and around a collection of shell companies that were formed by Hill, Nash and GT Source CEO Dwayne Graham. Much of the revenue filtered to the campaign came from M5, a limited liability corporation formed by the men in Maine meant to own and operate the casino if it were approved.

Graham told the Sun Journal during the campaign in 2011 that he was a financial contributor to the PACs.

During questioning of Hill on Thursday by Robinson’s lawyer, Elizabeth Germani, it became clear that Graham, who was made president of M5, had contributed no money to the corporation, although he was given 200 shares of the shell corporation.  

Germani also questioned Hill about another company he and Nash created, Wild West Gaming. She said Hill had presented the company to the casino backers as a going concern, but bank records show the company wasn’t exactly rolling in cash.

“Frankly, I think these banking records show quite the contrary,” Germani said noting the firm had $303.43 in its checking account in June and July 2011. 

“Do you remember that in July of 2011 there was no income coming into WWG and nothing coming out of that account?” Germani asked. 

Hill said the bank records may not show deposits for the company, but there was income. Germani said by September 2011, the bank records showed the account was overdrawn.  

“You had a negative $462 in your account,” she said. “Do you remember that?”

“I might have screwed something up,” Hill said. “I don’t remember.”

Germani pointed out that while his one company had a negative balance, he wired more than $120,000 to another Maine shell company, Great Falls Entertainment, an LLC set up to take ownership of Bates Mill No. 5 if the casino referendum passed.

Hill confirmed that he, Nash and Graham visited Lewiston in June 2011 and toured the mill building with Mendros, Robinson and city officials, including former Mayor Larry Gilbert and Lincoln Jeffers, the city’s director of community and economic development. The group also met with some of the local financial supporters of the casino and the partners of Great Falls Entertainment, Hill confirmed.

Robinson told the commission he had no motive to intentionally misreport the source of the PACs’ funding. He noted that while he was the official treasurer of one of the first PACs set up for the casino campaign, Green Jobs for ME, he was not the treasurer of the second PAC, the People of Lewiston-Auburn.

That PAC’s treasurer was former Lewiston police Chief Bill Welch, but according to Robinson, Welch was not involved in the finances of the PAC.  

The second PAC was set up at the insistence of Littlefield, according to Mendros. Littlefield wanted a different name for the PAC but also wanted it to appear to be the efforts of more “prominent members of the community,” so Gilbert, who supported the casino effort, and Welch agreed to put their names on the effort.

Gilbert has told the Sun Journal that he and Welch were on the PACs “in name only.”  

Both Germani and Mendros’ lawyer, Mark Walker, have urged the commission to dismiss the case against their clients, noting there’s little evidence to suggest the men intentionally violated state campaign finance rules.

Mendros has called the effort against him “a witch hunt.” On Thursday he elaborated on his frustration with the commission’s staff, trying to explain why he has been less than cooperative with their investigation.

Mendros also noted that his company, Olympic Consulting, was paid $25,000 for work on the campaign. He again said the campaign for the casino, which he started with Robinson, was wrested from his control by Hill and Nash who insisted Littlefield’s Dome make all the decisions.

Mendros said he trusted Littlefield’s abilities. The two men had known each other for decades, going back to their college days at the University of Maine, where they were both involved in campus politics.

When asked by Jonathan Wayne, the commission’s executive director, if he was “shut out,” Mendros said he was.

“It wasn’t suppose to be that way, but yeah, I was,” Mendros said. “Nothing went through us. They didn’t want us to have our hands on it; they wanted everything to go directly to Dome. All the decisions were Dome’s.”

sthistle@sunjournal.com