Soros-Backed Challenger Defeats Incumbent Prosecutor in Maine Race

In the race to become the top prosecutor in Maine’s largest county, George Soros-backed candidate Jacqueline Sartoris defeated incumbent Jonathan Sahrbeck.

With 94 percent of precincts counted, Sartoris collected 15,209 votes, or 65 percent, to Sahrbeck’s 8,069 votes in the June 14 Democratic primary, according to local radio station WMTM. Since they were the only two candidates seeking the office, Sartoris is expected to be elected as Cumberland County’s district attorney in the November general election.

The billionaire Soros is known for his efforts to bankroll the campaigns of progressive state and local prosecutor candidates across the country.

In the month before the primary, a Soros-backed super-PAC spent nearly $384,000 opposing Sahrbeck and supporting Sartoris, a whopping amount that’s almost five times the combined total spent by both candidates and unheard of in local prosecutor races.

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Sahrbeck, a career prosecutor, said most crimes in the county are fueled by either drug addiction or mental health issues, so he wanted to leverage the criminal justice system in a way to get more people into court-ordered treatment programs, according to a virtual candidate forum hosted by Portland Center for Restorative Justice.

To Sartoris, an environmental-lawyer-turned prosecutor, a district attorney’s top job is to set prosecution policies. Her vision is to reduce jail and prison populations through office-wide policies that set when to charge crimes, what charges to file, and how to resolve the charges, according to the same forum.

“People are mostly unaware that prosecutors have an incredible amount of power in the system. We, in fact, have the greatest power in the criminal justice system,” she said at the forum.

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However, about a month before the primary, the Soros-backed Democracy PAC II poured $300,000 into the newly formed Maine Justice and Public Safety PAC. The latter ended up spending $383,945 on mailers and digital ads opposing Sahrbeck and supporting Sartoris {snip}

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