Everyone’s on message But the state legislators' message is bogus BY LANCE TAPLEY

I never go to press conferences, so it came as a surprise to me when I found myself attending one in the State House. Political press conferences are synthetic, ritualistic, usually devoid of information that isn’t obvious — and you can’t obtain any news without sharing it with every other reporter there.

But I had been chatting with Michael Brennan in his office when the Senate majority leader stood up.

"Coming to the news conference?" he asked.

What news conference? It seemed impolite, however, not to go.

Brennan and much of the rest of Democratic legislative leadership met the media in Senate president Betheda Edmonds’s sunny corner office. They felt they needed to explain why they had decided to end talks with the Republicans on a budget deal.

Now they would try to push through their own budget. This they probably will do because Democrats are in the majority in both houses. But because they are barely in the majority, if a deal could have been made, less risk and unpleasantness would exist for them later in the session. And now the Republicans could paint them as — the horror! — partisan.

Thus:

"We all like each other," said Senator Edmonds, of the Democrats and Republicans.

There is "great bipartisan spirit" in the Legislature, said House Speaker John Richardson.

"We look forward to working in a bipartisan way" with the Republicans, said Margaret Rotundo, Senate chair of the Appropriations Committee.

"We like the Republicans, and they like us," gushed Representative Joseph Brannigan, the Appropriations House chair.

"We’re together. We’re just not together all the way" — at this, my pen dropped from my fingers, and I’m sorry to say I didn’t bother to record who performed this and further on-message croonings.

That night, the Democrats rammed through the Appropriations Committee, with the delicacy of an M1 Abrams tank, a budget with many provisions the GOP had not even seen before. This display of brute political force left many Republicans gasping in the snowbanks, as subsequent news stories have shown. The Democrats were as bipartisan as the United States Marines storming Fallujah.

See why I don’t go to press conferences?

CHARITY VAUNTETH NOT ITSELF

These Democratic leaders also were eager to show how much they had reduced Governor John Baldacci’s proposed $140 million in draconian cuts to social services.

But what about the $100 million or so in cuts that remained? (That was the figure at the moment; it changes daily.)

Speaker Richardson said the Democrats tried to determine "how best to hurt the fewest people possible."

Well, that attitude is not exactly being kind or generous to poor, sick, and mentally ill and disabled people.

"It’s erroneous to say there’s no impact," confessed Majority Leader Brennan. "But it’s something we can work with."

In further explanation of the enduring cuts, Richardson pointed to the $250-million citizen mandate to reduce property taxes expressed in last year’s successful initiative vote. Richardson also mentioned a requirement "not to raise broad-based taxes." This was a mandate not from the voters but from Democratic Governor Baldacci.

After I left the ongoing press conference, I wandered down to the Appropriations Committee room and encountered Mary Lou Dyer and Charlene Kinnelly, two lobbyists for organizations serving mentally disabled people.

Democratic leaders were saying they had "restored" a lot of money to social services. Nearly $7 million of Baldacci’s proposed $13 million in cuts to mental retardation services were restored, according to an email to me later from House Majority Leader Glenn Cummings; thus, there would be only a $6-million cut over two years. But Dyer and Kinnelly claimed that because Baldacci’s budget misrepresented the base level of services to which the cuts were made, and because the budget failed to take into account a guaranteed slash this year in federal Medicaid funds, the actual cut to these services would be $10 million.

Can their clients take this hit?

"I don’t believe they can," replied Dyer, sounding tired.

THE REPUBLICANS ARE NICE, TOO

At the moment, legislative Republicans are making a lot of noise about being run over by the Democrats on the state budget, but many of them had agreed earlier to chief components of the Democrats’ budget, and this reporter’s impression for a couple of years is that Republicans are pretty soft toward the Democrats. I have a file of pleasant things Republican legislators have said about Baldacci, for example.

Why?

One reason may be that Baldacci is one of them, at least fiscally speaking, and he leads the Democrats. Baldacci is a lot like Angus King, the former Independent governor. He gives some things to both sides: "no new taxes" and corporate welfare to the Republicans, gay and abortion rights to the Democrats. When re-election time came for King, neither party put up a credible candidate against him. The rich-contributor and corporate establishment of both parties fawned over him. This elite approval may be bestowed on Baldacci. And his voter approval remains high.

But Peter Cianchette, Baldacci’s 2002 substantial GOP opponent and only visible 2006 rival, continues to campaign against him and the Democrats. He recently claimed in a press release that the Democratic state budget proposal fell short "in reducing state spending," which is a typical Republican complaint. He also protested, however, that it fell short "on furthering our important commitment to health care for the uninsured."

Hmmm. Interesting. Could Cianchette be positioning himself as a compassionate conservative? And by taking on the father of Dirigo Health on his own turf? Maybe he figures that Dirigo, which Baldacci basically has not funded, is not going to work.

Hmmm. Imagine how a "moderate" Republican candidate — someone with the politics of Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, who are flaming liberals by red-state Republican standards — could do against Baldacci. Especially with a respectable, publicly financed Green Independent siphoning off the Democrats’ left wing, already disgruntled with our governor.

Of course, there’s one way Baldacci might squeeze out of this (highly fanciful) political trap. He could run to the right of Cianchette!

So who could the Green gubernatorial candidate be?

The first Greenish announced challenger is Nancy Oden, a longtime environmental and peace activist from down Jonesport way. But she filed recently with the state Ethics and Election Practices office as an independent candidate, not a Green Independent. There’s a good reason for this. Although the Associated Press, in its brief story about the event, said she was a Green, she is not one of the Greens As We Know Them; that is, the Jonathan Carter, Pat LaMarche, John Eder, John Rensenbrink, Maine Green Independent Party, Green Party of the United States sort. She is a member of a splinter group called the Greens/Green Party USA, and there is no love lost between the two organizations.

Apparently because Oden’s name was on a government watch list, she gained some notoriety in November 2001 after she was prevented from boarding an airplane in Bangor to fly to a Green Party USA meeting in Chicago. She has at times served as a spokeswoman for ecoradicals who do such things as chop down genetically modified corn crops.

So who could the Green Independent gubernatorial candidate be? It won’t be Nancy Oden.