“It should be unsurprising that national groups with health concerns are interested in helping Massachusetts craft better, safer marijuana laws.”
More than $11 million has already changed hands to advance or oppose a potentially record-breaking field of ballot questions that Massachusetts voters could decide in November, according to newly filed campaign finance reports, including a significant injection by a national dark-money group that opposes legal drug use.
All $1.55 million raised so far in support of a proposal to recriminalize recreational marijuana in Massachusetts came from SAM Action Inc., an organization that is not required to disclose the source of its own funding.
It’s the same organization that bankrolled opposition to a 2024 Massachusetts ballot question that sought to open up access to some psychedelic substances, which voters rejected.
Massachusetts is not alone as a battleground, either. SAM Action is also the only donor behind a ballot question in Maine this cycle that would similarly prohibit recreational pot use there, as the Portland Press Herald reported.
Both campaigns have generated scrutiny over their efforts to gather signatures from voters.
In Massachusetts, opponents filed an objection alleging the campaign “obtained signatures fraudulently” by telling voters the measure would provide affordable housing or fund public parks, not that it would ban recreational marijuana.
The State Ballot Law Commission heard arguments last week and is expected to rule by Friday. State law empowers the panel to determine whether signatures were placed on a ballot question petition “by fraud,” and its interpretation could set off a lengthier court battle over whether the question can go before voters.
Similarly, Mainers have been alleging in recent weeks that they were misled about what the anti-marijuana petition would do when they signed it. Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, said she’s received complaints about the topic, adding that she has no enforcement power because, as she put it to lawmakers, “You have a right to lie under the First Amendment.”
Wendy Wakeman, a veteran Republican operative who is working as spokesperson for the repeal campaign, said the Massachusetts and Maine questions are “not a coordinated effort” despite funding coming from the same national group.
SAM Action is a 501(c)(4) organization, so it’s not required to disclose its donors, leaving unclear exactly who is putting major dollars toward shutting down an industry both Massachusetts and Maine voted nearly a decade ago to legalize.
On its website, SAM Action claims affiliation with the nonprofit Smart Approaches to Marijuana group co-founded by former US Rep. Patrick Kennedy—a Democrat who represented Rhode Island, and the son of longtime US Sen. Ted Kennedy—along with former White House Office of National Drug Control Policy advisor Kevin Sabet and David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush who is now a senior editor at The Atlantic.
Wakeman declined to comment on SAM Action’s primary donors.
“Massachusetts is in the minority of states in the United States in which marijuana is available recreationally,” she told CommonWealth Beacon. “It should be unsurprising that national groups with health concerns are interested in helping Massachusetts craft better, safer marijuana laws.”
While marijuana remains illegal under federal law, 24 states, two territories, and Washington, DC, allow recreational marijuana use by adults, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Several others decriminalized the drug without fully legalizing personal, non-medical use.
President Trump last year also signed an executive order reclassifying marijuana as a drug with less potential for harm and dependence, signaling a softer position. SAM opposed that move.
Voters in the Bay State approved recreational marijuana use in 2016 by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent. Since then, the industry has generated more than $8 billion in sales.
The proposed ballot question would undo legalization of recreational pot use. It would leave the medical marijuana industry in place, but expand civil penalties for public possession above one ounce.
Under one common reading, the surge in ballot questions reflects growing discontent with the Legislature and an attempt to circumvent Beacon Hill’s inertia by putting policy changes directly before voters.
Most lawmakers are skeptical or outright disdainful of the trend, arguing that initiative petitions are increasingly a tool exploited by well-financed special interests.
Disclosures show that for many questions, big-dollar donors and business groups play a critical role, especially early in the cycle when campaigns are trying to get off the ground.
All of the $431,000 raised so far to oppose a rent control revival came from the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, NAIOP, and Nordblom Management, plus another $26,600 in in-kind contributions from MassLandlords Inc.
Most of the money behind a proposal that would replace the state’s partisan primaries with an all-party primary system has come from wealthy, often politically involved donors who have backgrounds in private equity or investment banking.
Randy Peeler, a senior advisor at Berkshire Partners who’s also on the board of a national group that supports primary election reforms, donated $550,000. Andrew Balson of Cove Hill Partners added another $290,000, and Mark Nunnelly, a former Department of Revenue commissioner under Gov. Charlie Baker and Bain Capital managing director, kicked in $250,000.
Nine others donated at least $50,000 each, while former gubernatorial candidate Danielle Allen, the effort’s figurehead, added $20,000 of her own.
Jesse Littlewood, the campaign manager for the primary-reform question, said he expects small-dollar donations to increase as the race unfolds.
“To be in the game of a ballot initiative where you’re playing to win, it requires a significant amount of resources,” Littlewood said. “We are really thankful that individuals have been willing to fund the work to make a better, healthier democracy, and those folks are providing the resources to do it, especially in the very early stages. It doesn’t mean that’s going to be the entirety of our giving, but they helped us get through the narrowest passages.”
Some campaigns are leaning on resources from Beacon Hill insiders past and present.
A bipartisan effort to rein in the stipend system that significantly boosts pay for some state representatives and senators hauled in $116,000, combining donations and loans, from former Democratic rep. Jonathan Hecht, a frequent progressive critic of the Legislature, and $112,500 from former MassGOP chair Jennifer Nassour. (Nassour is on the board of MassINC, the nonprofit that publishes CommonWealth Beacon.)
Other, smaller donations to the stipend-reform effort came from Allen, current MassGOP chair Amy Carnevale, state Auditor Diana DiZoglio (perhaps Beacon Hill’s most vocal legislative skeptic), former Democratic reps. Denise Provost and Jay Kaufman, and former Baker administration budget chief Michael Heffernan.
All lawmakers earn the same base salary, but they can receive significantly more in stipends based on leadership or committee positions. Those additional job titles are essentially awarded by the House speaker and Senate president, and critics argue the system creates a financial incentive for lawmakers to fall in line and not break from leadership.
Legislative leaders defend the status quo as the same better-pay-for-more-responsibility arrangement common to the private sector.
Through the end of 2025, the multitude of campaign committees supporting and opposing the dozen ballot questions in the mix for this November’s elections together raised more than $11.2 million, including both donations and in-kind contributions, and spent more than $8.8 million, according to a CommonWealth Beacon analysis of financial reports filed with regulators.
That amount is all but certain to explode as influential groups begin pitching their ideas directly to voters in the run-up to the November election.
At this same point in the electoral cycle two years ago, for example, proponents of a question to cease using MCAS standardized test results as a graduation requirement had received a bit more than $1.1 million in in-kind contributions. The opposition at that point did not even have any fundraising to report.
But by the time the dust settled in 2024, involved parties had collectively deployed more than $21 million on the politically bruising race.
Eleven of the ballot questions on track are newly filed this cycle, while the twelfth — a proposed repeal of the state’s 2024 sweeping gun reform law — originated that year but was not eligible to go before voters until 2026.
For most campaigns, early spending focused so far almost entirely on the biggest obstacle en route to the ballot: collecting enough voter signatures.
Supporters needed to collect at least 74,574 signatures from registered Massachusetts voters to keep each question in the mix. Organizers will need another, smaller round of signatures later this year to lock in their spots.
Most of the campaigns spent at least $750,000 on signature-gathering services, according to their disclosures.
But some organizers seem to have secured much better deals than their counterparts to come up with roughly comparable totals of certified signatures.
The campaign working to legalize Election Day voter registration, backed by Secretary of State William Galvin, spent $75,000 on signature-gathering with Massachusetts firm SignatureDrive. Another campaign, headed by DiZoglio, that is hoping to subject the Legislature and governor’s office to public records requests spent $150,000 with the same company.
Meanwhile, those pushing a question to allow single-family homes to be built on smaller lots spent nearly $1.3 million with SignatureDrive, more than 17 times as much as did Galvin’s team.
Some campaigns supplement paid signature collection with volunteer efforts, which defray the total costs, and others lean on influential organizations whose staff signature-gathering work gets counted as in-kind contributions.
If all of the questions make the ballot, it would be an even dozen, crushing the record of nine statewide ballot questions in a single year.
With so many in the mix, it’s likely that the amount of money spent on electioneering will also reach a new high. The record came in 2022, when campaigns supporting and opposing four measures collectively spent $65.8 million. (Nearly two-thirds of that amount was spent just on the successful ballot question imposing a surtax on wealthy households.)
All ballot question campaigns by Tuesday had to file 2025 year-end financial reports. Under state law, the campaigns do not need to submit their next financial disclosures until September, keeping most of the fundraising and spending obscured from public view until close to the election.
The Senate last week approved legislation that would require ballot question campaign committees to file financial reports at least monthly in election years. It’s not clear if or when the House will take up the measure.
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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