Published in the Kennebec Journal

The goals of the proponents of the Clean Elections Act were to reduce the role of private funds -- especially special interest contributions -- in Maine campaigns, to encourage more people to run for public office, and to level the playing field among candidates in individual races.

The Maine clean elections scheme reached full maturity in 2006. Approved by the voters in 1996, the first election under the new procedures was in 2000.

In each succeeding election, more candidates took advantage of public funding. This year, three gubernatorial candidates and 81 percent of the legislative candidates accepted public funding. Private financing of elections is now the exception in Maine.

Opponents of the Clean Elections Act worried about the costs to the state treasury of financing so many races. Some doubted that altering election practices would significantly diminish the impact of special interests on the actions of the governor and the Legislature. They also feared potential complications in determining when actions by one candidate or independent groups would trigger matching funds for other candidates. And some envisioned that "free" public money would inspire a lot of quixotic fringe candidates to run for public office.

We now have a track record. What does it show?

ENLARGING CANDIDATE POOL

Uncontested legislative elections have virtually disappeared in Maine since the enactment of public financing. In 2004 and 2006, the Republicans and Democrats combined fielded candidates in 98 percent of the possible races for House and Senate.

In 1998, the last year before public funding, the two major parties fielded candidates in only 88 percent of the possible races. In addition, the Green Independent Party offered candidates in an average of 16 legislative races in each of the two most recent election years, compared to only two in 1998.

The imposition of term limits and more aggressive recruitment efforts by the parties may well have contributed to this increase in competition. But the elimination of the need for candidates to raise their own funds is surely a factor as well in the contemporary reality that nearly every voter in Maine now has a genuine choice of candidates in legislative races.

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

Many factors contribute to electoral outcomes. The money spent by candidates on their campaigns is only one of those. Incumbency is important, so too are name recognition and party registration. The playing field is never really level.

What public funding has done, however, is to enhance the opportunity for weaker candidates (as measured by traditional financial resources) to communicate their messages to voters.

Close observers of this year's gubernatorial elections could not help but notice that the television ads for Barbara Merrill and Pat LaMarche seemed to appear as often as those of the candidates of the two major parties.

Legislative candidates rarely advertise on television, but presumably one would have found a similar equality among candidates in the distribution of lawn signs, brochures, mailings and newspapers ads that are the normal weaponry of those races.

PUBLIC FINANCING COSTS

The final figures are not yet available, but at election time, the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices estimated that public expenditures on legislative and gubernatorial elections would exceed $6.7 million.

The original advocates of public funding had hoped that much of the cost would be defrayed by income tax filers checking the box on their state tax returns that dedicated $3 to the clean elections fund.

That hope has not been met. In fact, the percentage of taxpayers checking the box has been steadily declining from a high of 16.4 percent in 1998 to 11.4 percent in 2005. Increasingly, as a result, the General Fund has borne the cost of public financing.

Some analysts think Maine dodged a big bullet in 2006. If all of those considering campaigns for governor had run and qualified for public financing, the total costs might well have exceeded $10 million. That prospect looms on the horizon, especially four years hence when there will be no incumbent.

Is public financing too expensive for Maine? That's a judgment call, but surely one that will attract much consideration -- and a wide variety of conclusions in the years ahead.

MATCHING FUNDS PROVISION

Those who worried about the operations of the matching funds provision of the Clean Elections Act were onto something. This has been complicated.

There were complaints earlier in the fall that Baldacci's campaign was purposely slowing its fundraising to avoid triggering additional public funding for his opponents. And, in the last few days of the campaign, Pat LaMarche appealed to the state Supreme Court to overturn a commission decision denying her matching funds she had sought to counter independent spending in support of her opponents.

The devil will always be in the details, especially when the implementation of a law requires public officials to parse political speech. But the Clean Elections Act created a system for appeals by aggrieved candidates, and that system seems to work. It may not produce outcomes that all candidates like, but it does give them a place to lodge their complaints and to get a timely determination. Public policy can do little more.

FRINGE CANDIDATES

Time now for confession.

I voted against the Clean Elections Act in 1996 because I feared it would open the floodgates to a torrent of hopeless candidates who would muddy the political waters. I imagined that scores of real estate agents and funeral directors and attorneys, seeking to enhance their name recognition to improve their businesses, would use public funds to "run" for office only as a way to become more prominent.

The collective effect of these diversionary candidacies, I feared, would make it harder for voters to learn about the real candidates and the important issues.

From the evidence to date, I can only conclude that I was wrong.

There are now more legislative candidates than there were before the Clean Elections Act, but most of the additional candidates are Democrats and Republicans running in districts formerly afflicted with uncontested races.

There has been no appreciable increase in contested primaries -- they remain a rarity in Maine. In 2006, we had two significant candidates for governor who were not Republicans or Democrats. That's not unique. Twice in the past generation, Maine has elected governors who were not Republicans or Democrats.

The 31 percent percent of the vote that Pat LaMarche and Barbara Merrill collected in 2006 may suggest a positive effect of public funding. Maine voters had more choices than the major parties alone can offer and nearly a third exercised that choice.

Political parties in America have rarely been in such bad odor as they are right now. In Maine, voters had a place to go with their unhappiness and they could do so within the political system. It's not a bad thing for unhappy citizens to be able to protest by voting rather than withdrawing from politics altogether.

The risk remains that future elections will produce candidates who are not sincere or not capable of attracting significant support and that they will qualify for hundreds of thousands of public dollars.

Those who think the qualifying standards are too low may well be right. But that is hardly a conclusion that one could draw from the first four election cycles under the Clean Elections Act. The qualifying standards will require future monitoring and perhaps some tinkering down the road. But, for now, no small number of Maine voters found something to like in the array of choices afforded them in 2006, and we shouldn't hasten to make it harder for such alternatives to emerge in the future.

ISOLATION OF GOVERNMENT

Few things are harder to determine in politics than the reasons why governors act as they do and legislators vote as they do.

While many Americans believe that special interests play too large a role in public policy making, it is nearly impossible to measure the extent of that influence -- or to determine the success of political reforms aimed at curbing it.

There can be no question that the ability of special interest groups to curry favor with legislators has been narrowed by the Clean Elections Act. In 2006, 81 percent of all legislative candidates received public funding; none of them could accept direct contributions from special interests.

Lobbyists for special interests will still roam the halls of the state capitol. Nothing wrong with that. But most legislators will now be free to listen to the substance of their arguments and to respond out of interest, not obligation. This was a goal of the advocates for clean elections and it has been largely achieved.

Baldacci, who eschewed public funding, raised more than $1.25 million from private sources, nearly all of it in contributions of $500 or less from individuals and political action committees. But since his success in raising private funds triggered matching funds for his opponents, he gained little financial advantage over the clean elections candidates.

And the 38 percent of the vote he received will not suggest to many future candidates that there's much magic in private financing.

The Clean Elections Act is not perfect. Few public policies are. It will require constant monitoring and adjustment as our experience broadens our understanding. But we have some evidence now that tells us that the fondest hopes of the advocates have been realized and the gravest doubts of the doubters have not materialized.

I was one of those doubters 10 years ago, but I'm coming around.

G. Calvin Mackenzie is the Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of Government at Colby College and a former chairman of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.