Let's do the books on a political ad.

Line one. Item: one Maine laundromat owner. Political affiliation: longtime Susan Collins supporter. Role cast in: angry Mainer who thinks Susan Collins is too expensive.

That's the whole audit. The rest is just interest.

The Maine Wire, Newsweek and the Daily Wire all reported this week on the woman, who owns a laundromat in the Scarborough area. She says that in March or April a videographer told her the footage he was shooting at her business was for the Collins campaign. The footage instead turned up in an ad from a political action committee called Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, which is backing Democrat Troy Jackson in the Maine Senate race.

The ad showed her in front of a row of Speed Queen washers, labeled her "Kelly, South Portland, ME," and ran the overlay "Susan Collins is too expensive for Maine."

"I feel like I was duped," she told reporters. "If they're willing to mislead me, how far will they go?"

The PAC's spokesperson denied misleading her. The group pulled the ad anyway "out of respect for her concerns." Collins then made her own ad. With the same woman. In the same laundromat. So the Speed Queens have now appeared for both campaigns, which makes them the most bipartisan machines in Maine.

Now the numbers, because the numbers are where it gets fun.

According to reporting on federal filings, the PAC has reported $5.32 million in outside spending this cycle, including $647,793 backing Jackson. Its largest donor is Pivotal Ventures, the firm of billionaire Melinda French Gates.

So, to balance the ledger: a billionaire-funded PAC spent six figures to tell a laundromat owner that her senator makes things too expensive. Pricing is apparently a sensitive subject, unless you're the one buying ad time.

Next column. Cost of living. ABC News found that Maine residential electricity costs surged 16% in one year, among the steepest jumps in the country. That's real. Nobody's arguing it. The question an accountant asks is: who was running the store?

Before running for Senate, Troy Jackson served as president of the Maine Senate, the body that writes Maine's energy laws. The U.S. Senator in Washington does not set Maine's utility rates. The legislature in Augusta has considerably more say. So the ad blamed the one person on the ballot with the least control over the local electric bill, and starred a voter who wanted to vote for her.

Let me run that as a formula. Expensive Maine, plus ad blaming Collins, plus Collins voter, divided by consent, equals a refund.

A laundromat is a business that runs on quarters and honesty. You put in what the sign says, you get what the sign says. Put four quarters in a dryer that promises 30 minutes and get 12, you call the owner. This ad promised a Collins spot and delivered a Jackson spot. In laundromat terms, that's a dryer that eats your quarters and then campaigns against you.

The latest Marist poll has Jackson at 49% and Collins at 47%. A two-point race. The kind of margin where every vote counts. Including, it turns out, the vote of the woman in your own commercial.

Final tally for the PAC: $647,793 spent backing Jackson. One ad pulled. One spokesperson's denial. One laundromat owner now appearing in the other side's ad.

In accounting we call that a net loss. In Maine they call it laundry day.

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The Demorat is a satire publication. This article is parody and commentary based on real news reports; jokes, exaggerations and fictional elements are not factual claims. Quotes attributed to real people are drawn from published reporting.

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