Bobby Charles, the Republican nominee for governor of Maine, has built his campaign on a promise to clean up government. Fraud, waste, no-bid contracts — that is the pitch. He told WGAN recently what he thinks is going on when a lobbyist writes a check: "you're essentially believing that you're going to buy a favor."

He would know. He has been a lobbyist for most of this century.

The firm he still runs

Maine Beacon reported on August 31 that Charles spent 16 of the 17 years between 2000 and 2016 as a registered lobbyist. He founded The Charles Group, and he still leads it. Its website listed him as "president and managing member" in April of this year — about a year after he announced his run for governor. The firm reported lobbying activity as recently as the first three months of 2026.

That is not a former career he left behind before entering public life. It is a business he is running while asking Mainers to put him in charge of state contracting.

Maine Beacon's review of his firm's disclosures found it collected at least $512,000 from clients that overcharged taxpayers, held lucrative no-bid federal contracts, or ended up in federal fraud and bribery cases. Federal lobbying registrations are public, filed with Congress and searchable in the Senate's lobbying disclosure database.

The client whose CEO went to prison for bribing a congressman

The clearest example is MZM Inc., which paid The Charles Group to lobby in 2005.

At the time, MZM was holding a no-bid Defense Department contract worth up to $250 million, and had already collected more than $150 million under it. A no-bid federal contract is precisely the thing Charles now tells Maine voters he will stamp out.

A year later, MZM's founder and chief executive, Mitchell Wade, pleaded guilty to bribing then-Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham in exchange for government business. The Justice Department's account of the plea is blunt: Wade admitted bribing Cunningham, providing improper benefits to Pentagon officials and employees, and funding political contributions made in someone else's name. Cunningham took more than $1 million. Wade also admitted routing nearly $80,000 in illegal campaign money to two other House members.

MZM and Wade agreed to pay a $1 million penalty over the straw contributions — money given in other people's names to get around the limits.

Charles' firm was not accused of any of that. It was paid to open doors for the company while the company was doing it.

The other one

Maine Beacon also found that The Charles Group took at least $276,000 lobbying for Bell Helicopter and its parent company Textron between 2000 and 2007. Bell later paid more than $16.5 million to settle claims that it had overbilled the Defense Department.

Overbilling the federal government is the second half of Charles' stump speech. He has spent this campaign telling Mainers that people are getting rich off public money and that he is the man to stop it.

He has done this before

The gap between what Charles says his record proves and what his record actually shows is the recurring feature of this campaign, not a one-off:

• He says his federal experience qualifies him to fix Maine's finances. More than a dozen audits found the State Department bureau he ran couldn't account for billions of dollars.
• He cut an ad promising to cut your property taxes. He doesn't use the property tax break Maine already offers.
• Maine's Ethics Commission opened an investigation into an anonymous site attacking his primary rival. His campaign admitted building two others.

Each time, the claim is about integrity, and each time the documents underneath say something else.

What the filings show

Bobby Charles is running for governor of Maine on a promise to end fraud, waste, and no-bid contracts, and he has said publicly that lobbyists give money expecting to buy favors. His own lobbying firm — which he still leads, and which reported activity as recently as this year — collected at least $512,000 from clients that defrauded or overbilled the federal government or ended up in bribery cases. One of them, MZM Inc., was holding a no-bid Pentagon contract worth up to $250 million when it hired him, and its chief executive later pleaded guilty to bribing a member of Congress.

Source

Channa Steinmetz, "Longtime lobbyist Bobby Charles rails against lobbyists, pledges to fight practices his clients engaged in", Maine Beacon, August 31, 2026. Photo: Charles campaign official photo, via Maine Beacon.