Wake Up Washington. The Free Party is Over. For Everyone.

Christine Merser, June 5, 2025

I, like many of you, support myself through my own company. It’s a marketing firm I started back in 1993. I’m not a wealthy woman. Over the years, I’ve given much of my time and treasure, and I consider my time to be some of my greatest treasure, to causes I believe in and to the politicians I thought might make a difference. That’s 35 years of real investment in things other than myself. Most of my friends have done it as well.

And yet, more and more, our inboxes are flooded with emails from politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, demanding five dollars before midnight or Chicken Little will come screaming that the world is ending.

One of my subscribers forwarded me a fundraising email from Chellie Pingree, Representative from Maine. She said she has been getting these a lot and wants to help, but she can’t help but wonder. What did I think? This paragraph is the one that got me,

“I recently held a roundtable at Planned Parenthood and heard firsthand what’s at stake if Congress cuts funding. That’s why I’m fighting back, but I need your help. Will you chip in $5 to help me continue the fight for reproductive freedom?”

She held a roundtable. She heard what’s at stake. And her ask is send her money?Shouldn’t she be asking us to send money to Planned Parenthood?

She is a U.S. Congresswoman. She has agency to stop it. She is paid close to $180,000 a year to work full time to stop it. She is allowed to send out mail to her constituents informing them, asking them to join her in a protest, come to D.C.

And she doesn’t say one thing she is doing to stop it.

And that leads me to a bigger point. During COVID, I put my own money into my company to keep every single employee on payroll. I called our clients and told them to stop paying us. We’d keep working. I took the hit. Because that’s what real leadership looks like when people are depending on you.

So I looked up Representative Pingree’s finances.

Reportedly, when she entered Congress, her net worth was around $300,000, mostly leveraged real estate. Today?

“As of her most recent financial disclosures, U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree’s net worth is estimated to range between $2.67 million and $11.5 million. Her portfolio includes stocks, real estate, and business interests. She holds a stake in Paloma Partners, a hedge fund founded by her ex-husband S. Donald Sussman, valued at up to $5 million. She also owns the Nebo Lodge on North Haven Island, with an estimated value of up to $5 million. In 2022, she reported annual income from investments and partnerships ranging between $113,505 and $1,035,000, on top of her $174,000 congressional salary. She reported no liabilities.” -My Ai, Celeste …. I dug deeper. There are lots of numbers for her as to her worth. All of them are in the many millions of dollars. Most larger than Celeste’s estimate.

The person who sent me this email works at a nonprofit. Her husband does too. They’re raising two small kids. And they’re being asked to send $5 to Chellie Pingree so she can ‘continue the fight for reproductive rights,’ without any proof she’s done anything concrete to stop Planned Parenthood defunding. Without a list of why she needs the money or where she will spend it.

I looked at her bills and what she has worked on. It’s all around agriculture and the like. Nothing for Planned Parenthood. Or a statement asking Susan Collins to vote no for Supreme Court Justices that took down abortion rights.

But I promise you, she knows my friend, who got the email cares about Planned Parenthood. It was sent to her Democrat’s list, and not her Republican’s list.

My advice? Write Chellie and ask how much she’s personally put into her campaign. Ask her how many dollars she’s transferred from her own bank account into a cause she claims to care about. Is she investing like she’s asking us to?

It’s no secret that a shocking number of elected officials enter public office with modest means and walk out millionaires. From both sides of the aisle. Maybe it shouldn’t be so lucrative. Maybe that is why it’s attracting such trash. And the Republican trading activity during this administration? Insider trading is alive and well in the Capitol. The list there is shocking. Shocking.

But it goes deeper.

While they’re working in Washington, representatives get a daily stipend of almost $80 for food. You can go online and see how much your rep takes out under these “expenses.” That’s a lot of peanut butter and jelly. What if, instead of pocketing it, they redirected those taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood? ACLU?

Look, I know we have to stay the course to get rid of this regime. In order to do that I do believe we have to make sure those who are supposed to be on our side understand that we see you now in a way we didn’t before. We will be an informed constituency. And, we will hold you accountable.

Go online and call her out on this, and send the $5 to Planned Parenthood. I called a local one here in Maine and asked them how I can donate directly to them. Go local right now. Go local.

And, to my representatives. Stop asking me to pay for your re-election under the guise of helping causes like Planned Parenthood. If you’re going to invoke their name, at least have the decency to make sure the money gets to them.

And, start emailing me actions you want me to take to help, and tell me your personal plan for how you are going to defeat this bill. Tell me your plan of action every single week until this regime falls. How about that, if you want to get re-elected?

We must tell every single representative, no more campaign donations until they show us exactly where the money we’ve already given is being used to stop what they so far are not stopping.

The problem isn’t that politicians don’t have enough money to get the job done.

So today’s to-do?

Call your congressman. Tell your senators. Tell your friends to call theirs.

Not one more dime. Not until this bill is gone completely. We don’t want amendments or softening around the edges. We want it dead.

And, we have to start doing our homework before we spend our treasure. We have to stop this bullshit. In its tracks. Do the work you are paid to do.

And we want receipts.