While the Clean Elections Act was supposed to take the influence of special interest groups out of elections in Maine, more than $1.2 million was spent in the last month of the campaign by political action and party committees, not bound by the rules governing individual candidates.

Nearly $620,000 of that money was spent on legislative candidates, the majority of whom were running on public money. Clean Election candidates are not allowed to solicit any outside contributions because their campaigns are financed by the taxpayers.

Instead, the money was spent on their behalf through so-called “independent expenditures” made by clearly interested groups like the House Democratic Campaign Committee and House Republican Fund, which, in turn, were funded by people and organizations interested in the outcome of the campaign.

Another $635,000 was spent on the two leading gubernatorial candidates – $107,000 for Clean Elections candidate Republican Chandler Woodcock and $528,000 for Democrat Gov. John Baldacci, who ran a privately financed campaign.

That’s on the top of the hundreds of thousands spent on their behalf earlier in the campaign from the Washington D.C.-based Democratic and Republican governors associations. That money was spent prior to the 21-day cutoff before Election Day, when independent expenditures are more closely monitored and detailed reports have to be filed.

The amount spent on independent expenditures has increased substantially since the Clean Elections Act went into effect in 2000.

In 2002, the last time there was a governor’s race along with the full Legislature up for re-election, $595,651 was spent by political action and party committees on behalf of candidates, according to numbers compiled by the state’s Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices. The largest amount, $399,450, was spent on behalf of Baldacci in his first run for governor.

In 2004, $529,909 was spent all on legislative races, since there was no contest for governor.

This year’s total of $1.25 million is more than double four years ago and has the attention of the Commission on Governmental Ethics, which oversees the Clean Elections law.

“We have to look at that. That’s one of the overriding principles behind the Clean Elections Act that it may help reduce the amount of money being spent,” said Paul Lavin, assistant director of the ethics commission office.

Getting around rules

Not only do the outside expenditures on behalf of Clean Elections candidates seem to fly in the face of the intent of publicly funded campaigns, they also allow big contributions to come through political action committees that would otherwise be prohibited under law.

Under the Clean Elections Act, privately financed candidates for governor, like Baldacci, can accept contributions of up to $500 per individual or organization. Privately financed legislative candidates are capped at $250. But, there are no caps on contributions to political action or party committees, which then use their money on behalf of candidates.

In the latest campaign finance reports, running from Oct. 1 through Oct. 26, for example, the Maine Democratic State Committee, which largely supported Baldacci’s re-election but also got involved with legislative races, raised just under $1 million, including:

• $305,000 from the Democratic Governors Association in Washington, D.C.

• $135,000 from the Maine Senate Democratic Campaign. It’s two largest contributions in that same time period were $25,000 each from the Edmonds for Leadership PAC and the Maine State Employees Union.

• $85,900 from the Maine House Democratic Campaign Committee. Its two largest contributions in that same time period were $28,000 from the Pingree Leadership Fund and $25,000 from the Maine State Employees Union.

• $60,000 from Donald Sussman of Paloma Partners Management Co., who has given in other elections.

• A series of smaller donations ranging from $15,000 from Plum Creek – the group developing in Moosehead Lake – which gave to both parties, to $5,000 from benefactor Harold Alfond, Aetna and the American Federation of Teachers, to name a few.

That money, in turn, was used largely to help re-elect Baldacci and for a few key state Senate races.

Two other key PACS – the House and Senate Democratic Campaign Committees – raised and spent money for legislators, on phone banks, fliers, and in the case of the hotly contested Senate race between Democrat Brian Rines and Republican Earle McCormick, $41,500 on TV ads for Rines. He lost.

On the Republican side, the Maine Republican Party in the last filing period raised $349,669, which it spent on Woodcock and legislative races. The money raised included:

• $200,000 from the Republican Governor’s Association in Washington, D.C.

* $115,000 from the Maine House Republican Committee.

Its two largest contributions in that time period were $100,000 from the Washington D.C.-based Republican State Leadership Committee and $10,000 from the Leadership for Maine’s Future PAC for assistant House Minority Leader Josh Tardy.

Political action committees like Tardy’s and the ones for Edmonds and Pingree and a number of others seeking leadership positions in the Legislature were questioned in the last election, but are legal under the Clean Elections Act.

While publicly funded candidates, like Edmonds and Pingree, can’t accept outside contributions for their own re-election campaigns and privately funded ones, like Tardy, are capped at $250 per donor, there are no restrictions on contributions to their leadership PACs.

Lavin said not all the candidates were happy about getting outside money spent on their races, and he received calls from those asking where it was coming from.

“I got calls from candidates who were surprised and were concerned that too much money was being spent on elections,” he said.

Some of their publicly financed opponents also were surprised to get state matching money as a result of those outside expenditures and didn’t know how to spend the money so late in the campaign.

In total, Lavin estimated taxpayers will spend a little more than $7.5 million on Clean Elections candidates this year, including $970,000 spent on the primary and another $3.5 million for the three publicly funded gubernatorial candidates and $3.1 million for legislative candidates running in the general election. This year 77 percent of all legislative candidates ran on public funds.

D.C. influence

On top of the money that was officially reported in the “independent expenditures” reports in the last 21 days before the election, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars spent earlier in the campaign, largely from the Republican and Democratic Governor’s Associations to pay for TV ads for Baldacci and Woodcock.

Those ads didn’t trigger matching money for their publicly financed opponents – independent Barbara Merrill and Green Party candidate Pat LaMarche – even though they had film of the two major-party candidates and talked about their qualifications.

Under an arcane law, independent expenditures made prior to 21 days before the election have to “expressly advocate” voters to mark their ballot for one candidate or the other to trigger matching funds. Within the 21 days, any ad mentioning a candidate’s name is deemed as advocacy.

The state’s Ethics Commission ruled the ads didn’t cross that line, even though commissioners agreed most people watching TV thought the ads were for either Woodcock or Baldacci.

“All that money spent prior to three weeks before the election really makes a mockery out of the Clean Elections law,” said Merrill, who came in third in the governor race, with 21 percent of the vote.

She said those earlier ads affected voters just the same as those run within the 21-day matching-fund period, and the state needs to change the law to trigger matching funds earlier, starting around Labor Day.

“The Clean Elections Act is a great thing, as long as the parties can’t defeat it,” she said, adding if it isn’t amended, it may not be worth keeping.

Copy the Story Link