Donald Trump raised just $7,605 for his presidential campaign from 32 donors in Maine through the end of May, campaign finance documents show, a small fraction of the amount his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, took in from donors in the state during the same period.

Reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show that Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, raised $498,894.18 from 4,029 donors in Maine. The reported donations through the end of May for Trump, who was self-funding his primary effort, cover just one printed page and range from $25 to $1,000.

On a national level, the two campaigns entered the final primaries with a wide disparity in finances. Clinton, who didn’t clinch her party’s nomination until early June, had $42 million in the bank at the end of May, while Trump, who became the presumptive Republican nominee in early May, had just $1.3 million.

In Maine, Clinton received money from Democratic Party stalwarts such as state Sen. Justin Alfond of Portland, who gave $500 in March and $2,000 last September. The 41-year-old Alfond, a former Maine Senate president who will leave office this year because of term limits, listed his occupation as “retired.” U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat in Maine’s 1st District, gave Clinton $2,700 last September, and her daughter Hannah Pingree, a former speaker of the Maine House, gave $750 in two donations to Clinton, who will be the first woman to be a major party nominee for president.

Federal election laws limit donations by individuals to candidates to $5,400 – $2,700 for the primary campaign and the same amount for the general election.

Both Clinton and Trump trail well behind where the two major party candidates stood in Maine in 2012. At the end of May 2012, President Obama had raised $1.2 million from nearly 16,000 donors in Maine, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had raised $250,416 from 4,323 donors. Obama would go on to raise more than $1 billion nationally, between his campaign and a super PAC supporting his re-election, and he would spend $985.7 million. Romney raised more than $992.5 million between his campaign and super PAC, spending all but $500,000.

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Trump has indicated he will raise money for the general election campaign, although he recently suggested he might just pay for it himself.

Trump’s top donor in the state this year is David Sewall of Orono, who owns and works 1,500 acres of forestland near Bangor and also has a field where he cuts hay.

He gave the New York billionaire $250 in March and another $1,000 in May because, he said, he liked the issues that Trump was raising, if not always the solutions the candidate offered.

On immigration, for instance, Trump has proposed a temporary ban on immigration by Muslims and a huge wall along the country’s border with Mexico for which, Trump insists, Mexico will foot the bill.

Sewall said the issue is “something that should be discussed in a public forum somewhere,” but he added that the wall idea “seems kind of wacky.”

Sewall said he gave the money to the Trump campaign in the hope that the issue, along with others such as the federal deficit, foreign trade deals, terrorism and the economy, are all part of the debate.

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“I’m not sure I see Mr. Trump as the savior of the world, but I do believe he’s raised some issues that need to be discussed,” he said.

Sewall said he hasn’t gotten any recognition from the Trump campaign for his status as Maine’s top donor, not even a “Make America Great Again” hat like the one that the candidate sometimes wears.

“Maybe I’ll be an ambassador or something,” he quipped.

Sewall said he’s not sure if he will donate to Trump’s general election campaign. He admits that a sort of campaign fatigue has set in and he doesn’t pay as much attention to politics now that the weather has warmed up and he’s spending more time outside and less time watching television.


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