Charles is running for governor of Maine on rooting out fraud, waste, and no-bid contracts. Maine Beacon found his own firm lobbied for MZM Inc., whose CEO pleaded guilty to bribing a congressman, while MZM held a no-bid Pentagon contract worth up to $250 million.
On August 20 in Arundel, Charles told young Republicans he'd call Tom Homan and ask for ICE agents and marshals at Maine polling places. The same day, in Gorham, he told reporters he doesn't know Donald Trump and has never met him.
Charles built his campaign on 18 months running a State Department bureau in Iraq and Afghanistan. A 2005 audit of that exact tenure called his front office 'structurally dysfunctional.' His answer was to call the reporting fake news.
Twelve days before the Republican primary, Maine's ethics commission voted 4-0 to find out who paid for midgleyexposed.com. The Charles campaign denies that one — while confirming under oath it built two other attack sites against its own primary opponents.
A right-wing account clipped four words from a 2022 interview. Bobby Charles turned it into roughly 20 posts, a petition demanding a state representative resign, and eventually a campaign plan to stop the 'Islamification' of Maine.
Charles built a campaign ad around raising Maine's homestead exemption. More than 327,000 Mainers claim that break every year. His own town says he never has — and his campaign still can't say how he'd pay to expand it.