The Baldacci “plot”

After Republicans balked, an effort to manipulate the Clean Election Act to make it harder for Greens and independents to qualify for public financing looks like it’s failing. But it may provide fuel for the campaign.

By Lance Tapley

Some left-wing snobs underestimate John Baldacci. For them he is too much of an average guy, an unexceptional man of the people, a dull, business-oriented centrist. But lately our Second District US representative — the presumed Democratic 2002 nominee for governor — has been showing plenty of Machiavellian cleverness.

Early this year, he lined up the Democratic establishment to support his candidacy. In April, he got rid of former State Senator Chellie Pingree as his liberal competitor, convincing her to run for the US Senate, seemingly without hope, against Republican incumbent Susan Collins.

Most recently, people representing his interests were involved in closed-door negotiations with Republican legislative leaders to tailor the Clean Election law to Baldacci’s advantage. This law is a direct initiative passed by voters in 1996 that will kick in public financing for gubernatorial candidates next year.

Baldacci’s goal was, ostensibly, to get rid of threats from likely Green Party nominee Jonathan Carter, former Lewiston Mayor John Jenkins — who is thinking of running as an independent — and perhaps other candidates who might emerge as serious competitors for votes. This goal could have been accomplished if he reshaped the law to deny them public financing.

Whether this plot is exactly true or not, it is what Mr. Clean jeans Attempts to alter the citizen-initiated Clean Election law rankle some outside of Baldacci’s Democratic party Carter, Jenkins, GOP announced candidate James Libby, and their supporters have claimed in a flurry of protest. Their complaints — especially those resounding through the Republican party — cast a sufficiently large cloud on the proposed changes to the Clean Election law that it is unlikely that any of them will make it through the legislature before it adjourns within the next couple of weeks. Baldacci himself denies any dastardly machinations.Here is the story of the alleged Baldacci Clean Election Plot, a tale of intrigue and, the congressman’s opponents might say, of cleverness that overreached.

The push for the changes, legislative sources agree, largely came from former Democratic gubernatorial primary candidate Philip Merrill, an energetic Baldacci supporter and a State House fixture who is counsel to Senate president Michael Michaud. Merrill has been involved in conversations on the Clean Election Act with both key Democratic and Republican legislators, plus people associated with Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, the liberal group that campaigned for the initiative’s approval at the polls. The Green Party and potential independent candidates were not invited to the talks.

“It does come from Baldacci,” said Senator Chandler Woodcock, a Franklin County Republican on the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee. He was privy to the negotiations. “He has the most obvious interest in seeing the changes made.” He said the Democrats “want to limit the possibilities in the governor’s race.”

Major changes discussed included:

•A hike from 2500 to 5000 in the $5 contributions needed to be gathered before a candidate qualifies for public funding. At present, public funding could give a political-party candidate as much as $314,000 in the primary and $861,000 in the general election.

•A requirement that the qualifying contributions all come from a candidate’s political party if the candidate is running in a primary. At present, the contributions can come from any registered voter.

•Permission for a candidate to return to contributors any already-collected money beyond the “seed money” a candidate is allowed to raise during her or his effort to obtain qualifying contributions. The seed money now is capped at $50,000, but one proposal would raise it to $100,000. This change in the law would allow a candidate to qualify for Clean Election funds even if the candidate had started traditional fund-raising, as is the case with Baldacci.

•An increase in the amount of funds to be distributed to a gubernatorial candidate to around double the current levels — to a maximum of $600,000 for the primary and $1.5 million for the general election.

“If they change the law I’ll run for governor for sure,” threatened Jonathan Carter, implying he’d be so angry he would be sure to run. “There’s never been a candidate who’s gotten 5000 contributions in Maine. It would be prohibitive for many candidates in or out of a party. The express purpose of the change would be to exclude people from participation in the political process. What Baldacci is concerned about is that if there are four or five candidates in the race his coronation may not occur.”

JONATHAN CARTER: will he be mad enough to run?

Carter, who would use public financing, admitted that as a candidate he would not turn down the money if the legislature made the Clean Election system more attractive by increasing the amount of funds given out. But he felt that this citizen-initiated law should be changed only with great caution and only when there is experience with it at the gubernatorial level. And the people should vote on any changes, he said.

Carter suggested that representatives of the Maine Citizens for Clean Elections group — actually, a coalition of organizations including the League of Women Voters and the Maine AFL-CIO labor federation — had participated in negotiations to change the law because they were afraid that, unless both of the two major parties participate in the Clean Election system, legislators would have an excuse to gut the law in the next legislative session, claiming it didn’t work.

Specifically, the Clean Election group was “bowing to pressure from the Democrats,” Carter said, because they felt they needed to accommodate Baldacci so he’d “go Clean.” Because the candidates for the Republican nomination are little known compared to Baldacci, and they would have a much harder time raising funds, it is expected they will use public financing.

Carter, who is edging closer daily to deciding to run for the Green nomination, was particularly upset with changes to the law being negotiated “behind closed doors,” without participation by Greens and independent candidates. The Green Independents constitute an official party in Maine like the Republicans and Democrats. In 1998, its gubernatorial candidate, Patricia LaMarche, got 7 percent of the vote; in 1994 Carter got 6 percent when he ran for governor.

Democrat Phil Merrill responded that he did consult the Greens. In fact, he said, he traveled in May to Carter’s remote mountain homestead to discuss changes in the Clean Election law. Carter saw their meeting differently: “It wasn’t about the Clean Election Act, it was about gubernatorial politics for 2002 in a broad sense,” although he said the Clean Election Act was discussed.

John Jenkins, the former nonpartisan Lewiston mayor who also was a Democratic state senator in 1997-1998, was as incensed as Carter with what he saw as a Baldacci-inspired plot. He, too, was especially concerned with the possibility of an increase in the number of qualifying contributions to 5000.

“This is an attempt to change the rules in midstream,” he said. “Why is this change being done now? Who stands to benefit? The Green Party only has 7000 members. If the contributions had to come from the members of a candidate’s party, this increase would effectively eliminate them.” But Jenkins was also concerned about the sharpened difficulty for an independent if he had to find 5000 contributors instead of 2500.

Contemplating such changes in an election period that has already begun, he felt, is “embarrassing for the state of Maine. We shook our heads in disbelief when we saw the [presidential election] fiasco in Florida. We’re not Florida. The deck should not be stacked to favor one candidate.”

Jenkins, who said he is “75 percent certain” that he will run, is a progressive, articulate (he is a motivational speaker by profession) man who has been wooed by some Greens to challenge Carter in a primary. But, while saying he found many “kindred spirits” among the Greens and would appoint them to his administration, he doesn’t want to be beholden to any single party. “I want a coalition administration,” he said. He seemed firm in his plans to run as an independent. (For his part, Carter said he would be happy with Jenkins in his administration “because the state desperately needs a coalition with a new vision including Greens, independents, Republicans, and Democrats.”)

James Libby, the Buxton Republican and Sanford High School teacher who announced his candidacy in April, is also plain-spoken about the changes that were proposed for the Clean Election law. “It’s so incredibly self-serving,” he said, speaking of Baldacci. Libby was particularly upset with what he called “the Baldacci clause,” the proposal that would allow a candidate who had already collected campaign contributions to return them (any over the permitted “seed money” amount) in order to qualify for public financing.

This clause’s purpose, Libby said, “is to allow John Baldacci to become a Clean Election candidate. The best thing about the Clean Election Act is that you can’t take special-interest money, but Baldacci’s already raised quite a bit of special-interest money.” By contrast, Libby noted, he has long been a supporter of the law and has not taken special-interest contributions.

Libby, who agreed that the idea of increasing the number of qualifying contributions to 5000 was a bull’s-eye on the Greens, had an analysis similar to Carter’s of the involvement of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections with Merrill in discussing changes to the law: “They think Baldacci’s going to win. They want this law to be a success. So they want to have a governor elected under the Clean Election law.”

Libby and other Republicans who saw Baldacci seeking an advantage in the proposed changes were instrumental in making it unlikely significant amendments to the law will pass the legislature. Republicans believe that they have no political interest in preventing Carter and Jensen from running for office with public funds. The conventional political wisdom is that any candidate who takes votes from Baldacci from the left would help the GOP. Carter is widely credited with taking enough votes in 1994 from the Democratic nominee, former Governor Joseph Brennan, to throw the election to independent Angus King.

“The Democrats started the talk” about possible changes, said Senate president pro tem Richard Bennett, an Oxford County Republican. “But I’m generally opposed to any effort to change the will of the people” expressed at the ballot box. “I would only do it if it were broadly supported.”

Bennett admitted, however, that the Democrats had enticed the Republicans with the possibility of increasing the amount of funds to be given out to gubernatorial candidates. “When you are competing against someone who has the advantage of the resources of federal office, you have to ask how much will make a candidate competitive,” he said, referring to the undisputed frontrunner Baldacci. But he said the Republicans became wary of the package of changes when “we had a suspicion people were trying to change the law for personal advantage.”

The two leading representatives in the State House lobby of the Clean Elections coalition, George Christie and Arn Pearson, said they got involved in the negotiations because, as Christie put it, “there were some very bad amendments to the Clean Election Act” being circulated. The Greens were not invited into the talks, he commented sourly, “because nobody asked them.”

Pearson feared that there might not be enough public money authorized under the current law “to make it viable” for some gubernatorial candidates. He insisted that there was no intent “to break faith with the voters” by discussing changes, but that “the public will lose confidence in the law” if only “marginal” candidates use it: “The best thing that could happen is to have as many candidates as possible” use it. If a Clean Election governor were elected, he could serve “as an ambassador” to other states, he said.

Christie, not coincidentally, is chair of a Washington, D.C., group promoting Maine-style public financing of campaigns throughout the country.

Because of the protests over the proposed Clean Election amendments, both Pearson and Christie seemed resigned to the conclusion that there would be no major changes to the law. Merrill, too, was equally glum. “There isn’t much possibility” of any big changes, he observed. Now, as a result, “nobody who has any chance of being elected governor will run Clean,” he said.

Baldacci “wanted to run Clean, he wanted changes to allow this,” Merrill said. But “we never intended them in a way that would serve him and nobody else,” although he admitted that he felt “fringe campaigns” should not be publicly financed.

He admitted, too, that raising the number of qualifying contributions “could make it difficult” for the Green Party, but he felt Jonathan Carter potentially had the ability to reach the 5000 number. Merrill seemed most disappointed that the distribution of public funds would be capped at $861,000 for the general election — too low, he thought, for Baldacci to run the best campaign possible against, for example, independent David Flanagan, the wealthy former Central Maine Power company president who appears to be readying a campaign.

The $861,000 figure results from a formula based on the average of expenditures in the past two gubernatorial elections. Because Angus King only had token opposition in 1998, the arithmetic produced an unrealistically low sum, Merrill said.

Congressman Baldacci, too, seemed disappointed that he apparently would not be running as a Clean Election candidate. In an interview just before a recent Bangor fundraiser — prohibited if he were a Clean Election candidate — he acknowledged that because of the traditional fundraising that he had already launched he could not become a publicly financed candidate unless the law were changed.

But he denied that he had taken the initiative to change the law, asserting that he merely was “approached by the Dirigo Alliance” about possible amendments. The Dirigo Alliance is a liberal advocacy group (George Christie is its executive director) and a member of the Clean Elections coalition. “We had a concern that the changes be bipartisan,” Baldacci insisted. He denied discussing any Clean Election Act changes with Merrill.

Baldacci said he didn’t know how much money he had raised so far or even how much he expected to raise from the Bangor fundraiser. He noted that on June 30 he would have to file a campaign contribution and expenditure report with the federal government. As for the continued possibility of changes to the Clean Election law, “nothing’s happened to my knowledge, and if it’s happened I’m not aware of it,” he said.

Still, the attempt to change the law, even if it now appears doomed, got some people upset with Baldacci and may have provided them with ammunition for the coming campaign. “This effort to sabotage our first-in-the-nation public financing law smells of the same-old political power brokering that has reduced our democracy to being owned by special interests,” said Jonathan Carter.

Lance Tapley can be reached at ltapley@ctel.net