Ending Blue State Corruption
Robert B. Charles – Nationally, only seven states in the 2020s had one conviction for public corruption. If this sounds like good news, it is not. In 2025, 38 states are one-party controlled, some blue ones for years, creating potential for public corruption and cover-ups.
As the late Senator Edward Brooke, enemy of public corruption, warned: “When people treat corruption as a routine part of the process, you have something far worse than wrongdoing or moral failing; you have a political cancer that breeds cynicism about democratic government and infects all society.”
Aesop offered this irony. “We hang the petty thieves, and send the great ones to public office.” Political crimes are always serious. Until corrected, they persist.
A 2025 study on state corruption was blunt. “Measures of corruption can be misleading, as corruption is easier to discover in states with strong anti-corruption laws…which corrupt leaders are less likely to implement.”
“Higher corruption convictions may actually indicate a state with less corruption, and a low number of corruption convictions may indicate a state with greater corruption.” Bingo!
Of the seven states with just one conviction, four were fraud, one was manslaughter, and one – the lightest of all – was a single election violation. That was Maine.
Take a deeper dive, since Maine is the poster child for one-party corruption. Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, threw President Trump off the ballot in a fit of unhinged partisanship, unanimously reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
She admits illegal aliens are on the voter rolls, but refuses to produce the rolls when asked by the Department of Justice. Running for governor, she revels in illegality.
Early this year, a State audit revealed weak oversight for $2.1 billion in contracts, “spending riddled with oversight failures and…a profound failure of governance,” and “disturbing pattern of systemic negligence that should alarm every taxpayer,” all detailed in 500 pages of insider contracts.
Democrat politicians, put there to keep faith, did the reverse. They betrayed Maine taxpayers, stole their money, abused the “low cost service contract provision” for friends, and bypassed the bid process.
They allowed millions in “mismanaged child care funds,” putting thousands of kids at risk, permitted “fraudulent school meal reimbursements,” gave “payments to the deceased,” failed again with “unsafe foster care placements and improper payments.”
Democrat “systemic negligence” across agencies is a national disgrace, affecting children, and unquestionably costs lives. Public corruption does that.
Adding abuse to abuse, when that auditor testified before the legislature, Democrats – in total control – blocked the discussion, cut off the Republicans. The Democrat Attorney General refuses to prosecute.
Higher up the chain, Maine’s Governor, an out-of-touch national embarrassment, oversaw this corruption and even tried to crush a probe into her own drug use in 1995. At the time – yet more public corruption, she was a district attorney.
This is the same governor who refuses to accept President Trump’s tax cuts, blocks funding for schools on her unconstitutional Title IX interpretation, sues Maine schools trying to follow the law and protect girls, and refuses to prosecute tens of millions in Medicaid (MaineCare) fraud, while funding illegal aliens’ healthcare.
To these abuses, add others – millions paid to newspapers for good coverage, an ombudsman showing Maine kids at grave risk from her Office of Child and Family Services, Democrat legislators giving themselves money, one a $500,000 grant (forgivable loan) for her three-person brewery.
To cap it all, Mainers’ trying to get to the truth with their Freedom of Information requests are shut down, delayed, or blocked as “burdensome.” Indeed.
Unchecked power corrupts. “Absolute power,” to quote Lord Acton, “corrupts absolutely.” Needed is accountability. This is not policy. This is an integrity issue.
When does stealing by a one-party state like Maine stop? When voters rise in overwhelming numbers to stop it, throw the crooks out, say no more cover-ups.
SF Source AMAC Dec 2025