Democrats seeking their party’s nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Susan Collins like to tout their pledge “not to accept corporate PAC money.” Each of the numerous email fundraising solicitations from Sara Gideon points out she isn’t “taking a dime from corporate PACs.” And the headline on Betsy Sweet’s campaign website proudly proclaims: “No PACs. No Corporate Money. All people.”

These candidates would convince you they are nearly monastic in their fundraising chastity — that any money they accept has come only from the purest of donors with the purest of political intentions.

The problem is that’s simply not true. There are very large loopholes that allow these candidates to say one thing and do exactly the opposite.

First, Betsy Sweet’s commitment to forgo corporate money is essentially just a pledge to follow the law. That’s because no candidate for federal office can accept corporate money because doing so would be illegal.

She also renounces PACs, yet was eager to accept the endorsement of “Justice Democrats,” a group that spends money to support progressive candidates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Justice Democrats is also a PAC that has a long list of donors who work for companies like Microsoft, Cox Communications and Amazon. In other words, corporations.

Sara Gideon defines impure money, in part, by pointing to her decision not to accept donations from corporate political action committees.

A corporate PAC is made up of employees of a specific company. For example, General Dynamics, the parent company of Bath Iron Works, has a PAC. The men and women who build ships at BIW can contribute to it, which then donates to both Republican and Democratic candidates. Employees aren’t forced to give, but many choose to engage in the political process in this way.

As noted, corporations themselves are legally prohibited from donating to a federal campaign, but they can donate directly to campaigns at the state level. While speaker of the Maine House, Sara Gideon ran her own PAC and collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from numerous pharmaceutical, health care and legal industries, among others.

Much to the chagrin of her Democratic opponents, Sara Gideon was immediately endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. As its name implies, the DSCC is the Senate Democrat’s political arm, and it is already helping Ms. Gideon pay for everything from fundraising to television ads. It turns out that the massive DSCC war chest is funded by the very same corporate PACs that Sara Gideon has “sworn off.” In fact, candidate Gideon’s most recently reported fundraising numbers only illustrate the dishonesty as she has proudly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from PACs.

If she is acting according to her own stated purity principles, why is Sara Gideon accepting support from corporate PAC-funded groups?

Candidates like Betsy Sweet and Sara Gideon believe there’s political advantage in talking about campaign finance purity. They want you to believe they don’t accept “dirty money” and they’re not beholden to corporate interests. The reality is they’re still taking the money — it’s just coming in the back door.

Richard Bennett is a former president of the Maine Senate and former chairman of the Maine Republican Party. He lives in Oxford.