April 3, 2025 — Since its founding three years ago, the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association has been a vocal opponent of offshore wind and relied on funding from a right-wing advocacy group connected to one of the most influential conservative activists in the U.S.
Now, the fishermen’s organization known as NEFSA is looking to diversify its revenue sources by asking coastal communities in Maine for financial support.
Jerry Leeman is the founder and CEO of NEFSA. And for the past three years he’s been the star of an advocacy campaign that’s led him up and down the northeast coast to preach against offshore wind.
Sometimes it’s in a banquet room in Rye, N.H., or in one of NEFSA’s slickly produced videos.
“These ridiculous data assessments that are based on little to nothing, we’re doing falsified research. It’s political science. This isn’t real science. Real science is the real observation of what things are,” Leeman said in one of NEFSA’s videos.
That message — and his sharp critiques of offshore wind — have also landed Leeman interviews on FOX News. When a blade from the Vineyard Wind project near Nantucket broke and sent debris onto nearby beaches last summer, Leeman joined a protest flotilla that drew interest from the network’s business channel.