Bangor Daily News(Maine) April 18, 2002
by AJ Higgins
AUGUSTA - A split vote on the state ethics panel Wednesday left Maine Democratic Party officials pondering their next move in a continuing effort to challenge Jonathan Carter's publicly funded candidacy.
Carter, the Green Independent Party's nominee for governor, said he will know Friday whether he will be certified as a Maine Clean Elections candidate. Staffers at the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Elections Practices must certify at least 2,500 of the nearly 3,500 signatures and individual $5 contributions submitted by the candidate.
Depending on how much money is raised by his privately funded gubernatorial opponents, the Lexington Township resident ultimately could be eligible for a little more than $900,000 in public funds to run for governor.
Carter, who has attracted significant Democratic support in previous runs for Congress and governor, believes he can win the November election with a campaign war chest of nearly $1 million. In what is shaping up as a four-way race in November, U.S. Rep. John Baldacci's bid for the Blaine House could be threatened if he were forced to split the Democratic vote with Carter and independent candidate David Flanagan, a Manchester resident who served as a former senior staffer to Democratic Gov. Joe Brennan.
Should Baldacci of Bangor lose big chunks of the Democratic support, it could open the door for either Peter Cianchette of South Portland or Jim Libby of Buxton, whichever of the two Republicans can win the GOP nomination in the June primary.
The Maine Democratic Party filed a complaint with the ethics commission asking them to investigate their allegations against Carter. For one, the Democrats claim Carter illegally used some polling results commissioned by the Sierra Club last summer when he sent out a campaign fund-raising letter to potential contributors. In the letter, Carter was seeking so-called seed money to enable him to qualify for public financing of his campaign under Maine's Clean Elections law. The Democrats said use of the poll without reporting it as an expense violated the Maine Clean Elections Act and state election laws.
"The importance of this decision is profound," declared Kurt W. Adams, a lawyer for the Democrats. "There's $900,000 at stake."
Complicating the day's events was the fact Wednesday's meeting was the first day on the job for all four of the commissioners. Alan Harding, a Democrat and Presque Isle lawyer; former Democratic Maine Attorney General Andrew Ketterer of Madison; former House GOP leader James Donnelly of Brewer; and former Assistant House GOP leader David Ott of York all were sworn in as new commissioners. Gov. Angus S. King has not yet submitted the name of a candidate to serve as the fifth member of the commission who must be an unenrolled voter.
The new ethics panel members attempted to discern the fine points of arguments made by Carter and Adams who sparred over essentially two questions:
* When does a political candidate become a political candidate under the Clean Elections Act?
* If someone freely donates services or information to a campaign that could carry some monetary value, does a candidate's acceptance of the services or information require reporting it as a campaign expenditure?
Carter argued that much of the polling data he used in his campaign letter was donated by the pollster and at least 4 years old and that it had been gathered before his declaration as a candidate last July. Democrats maintained they were simply trying to make sure that all candidates were complying with the state's Clean Elections law and asserted Carter knew he was going to be a gubernatorial candidate when he accepted the polling information before announcing his candidacy.
After more than four hours of discussion, the board split on the Democrats' request for an investigation with both Democratic members voting for an inquest and the two GOP members voting against.
"If we don't do [an investigation], we'll create a very large loophole in the Clean Elections Act," Harding said.
"Well, I'm not prepared to go as far as the [Democrats] would like us to go," countered Ott.
With the board deadlocked, the Democrats' immediate hope for an investigation was snuffed out. Carter characterized the panel's vote as a finding that there were no grounds for an investigation.
"The Baldacci Democrats don't want me in the race and they're using the Maine Democratic Party as a tool," Carter said.
Democrats are keeping their options open and they could still challenge Carter's certification before the ethics panel if he is in fact certified as a Clean Elections candidate Friday.
"We appreciate the fact that it is a very big issue and we'll go forward with discussions about what we're going to do," said Gwethalyn Phillips, chairwoman of the Maine Democratic Party.
