Our Work

Pine Tree Power · Statewide referendum, Maine · Two years · $25M

Opened at 37 percent. Won with 70.

Salt Public Affairs ran a two-year, $25 million campaign to defeat a statewide referendum that would have seized Maine’s two investor-owned utilities and created a government-controlled power company called Pine Tree Power. Salt formed the Maine Affordable Energy Coalition, the organization that served as the front line of opposition to the proposal.

Challenge

A citizen petition signed by 80,000 voters put the takeover on the statewide ballot as Question 3. At the beginning of the campaign, polling showed only 37% of voters said they would vote against it.

Strategy

Argue the case on cost rather than ideology, and build a coalition broad enough that the opposition could not be dismissed as the utilities talking about themselves. Simultaneously, Salt ran a statewide canvass to collect 80,000 signatures of its own, putting a counter-measure on the same ballot: any new government-run power company would need statewide voter approval before taking on $1 billion or more in debt.

Capabilities

Coalition building
Communications & PR
Paid communications
Field
Earned media amplification

Outcome

By Election Day, 70% of voters rejected the proposal. The campaign eventually employed nearly 100 staff, contractors and consultants under a single plan.

70%: of voters rejected the proposal
500,000: doors knocked in-state
140+: organizations in the coalition
16,000: individuals signed on by name
80,000: signatures collected for the counter-measure

Residents gathered outdoors at a community event

Press clips · Pine Tree Power

The Wall Street Journal
Can Voters Fire Their Power Companies? Maine Is About to Find Out
“There’s a lot of problems with the Pine Tree Power proposal, but if you wave the magic wand and get rid of all of them except the cost, it would still be an enormous problem.”

Utility Dive
Maine debate heats up as vote nears on public takeover of CMP, Versant Power
“We organized to put Question 1 on the ballot because the proponents of the takeover were unwilling to come clean on what that cost would be.”

Portland Press Herald
Opponents of Pine Tree Power far outraise supporters of Question 3
“The biggest problem with Pine Tree Power is the cost. There are plenty of other reasons why their proposal won’t work, but even if all the other problems were to magically disappear you just can’t get past the cost.”

Portland Press Herald
Effort to create Maine publicly owned electric utility fails
Voters “did their research” on what Ritch called a “very complicated issue.”

Quotes are Willy Ritch, then executive director of the Maine Affordable Energy Coalition.

Investor-owned utilities · Seven states

The same argument, seven times, in seven different rooms.

Salt works with investor-owned utilities across seven states on rate cases, regulatory proceedings, infrastructure siting and organized opposition. Each state has its own politics, its own regulator and its own press corps, and the case has to be rebuilt for each one. The consistency is in the method, not the message.

Sector: Energy & utilities
Scope: Seven states
Issues: Rate cases, siting, opposition
Detail: Available on request

Media & creative

Coverage of the campaigns we have run, and the creative that ran in them. Press clips from Pine Tree Power sit with that case study above.

Aerial view of the Tampa skyline at dusk

Tampa Bay Times · March 27, 2026

“The year was 2023, and utility companies in Maine were staring down the political equivalent of the barrel of a gun.”

Emily L. Mahoney, Times staff

They were among the least popular utilities in America, and residents fed up with high electric bills sprouted a grassroots campaign to put them out of business. If voters approved a question on the ballot, the companies would be kicked out of the state, and the grid would be acquired by a publicly owned nonprofit called Pine Tree Power.

Facing this threat, the companies summoned an army of political strategists. One of their leaders was Willy Ritch — a longtime Democratic strategist who headed a group funded by Maine’s largest utility.

[…]

Ultimately, the power companies prevailed in Maine, after pouring tens of millions into nonstop messaging that warned of exorbitant costs and more frequent blackouts if the utilities lost control. The defeat of the referendum was a victory for the utility industry, which uses examples of failed takeover attempts to warn other cities and states that it can’t be done.

Excerpted from the Tampa Bay Times. Ellipsis marks omitted text.

Still from a Salt television spot: a man speaking to camera in a diner — On-camera testimonialCampaign creative · Television

Still from a Salt television spot: a lineworker at an electrical substation — Lineworker at the substationCampaign creative · Television

Still from an animated Salt television spot: a cartoon duck beside the words Politicians trying to seize power grid — Animated spotCampaign creative · Television

Front of a Salt mail piece styled as a scratch-off lottery ticket, headlined Government-Controlled Power Game — Scratch-ticket mail pieceCampaign creative · Mail

Opened at 37 percent. Won with 70.

The same argument, seven times, in seven different rooms.

“The year was 2023, and utility companies in Maine were staring down the political equivalent of the barrel of a gun.”

Ask us about the work we haven’t published.