The filing period for signatures closed today for gubernatorial candidates and it’s clear that one political party had better things to do. Democrats should be embarrassed by their failure to field a strong candidate.

Gov. Angus King, an independent, is ready to run. The Republicans got their political bigfoot in Jim Longley Jr. Even the Green Party, despite infighting, recently presented Pat LaMarche, an independent who is affiliated with the party, such as it exists. No offense to the Democrats who have announced their candidacies, but coming in fourth place isn’t going to look good.

The Democratic dearth should not surprise the party. For all of the 1990s, they’ve rejected up-and-coming leaders in favor of the party’s senior statesman. Former Gov. Joseph Brennan ran in and lost the top-ticket race in three of the last four elections. He and his supporters failed to understand that his valuable years of service were already behind him. That hurt the party during his campaigns and it is hurting the party now.

It doesn’t help that the person to beat used to be one of them. The Democrats’ challenge is to make the case to the voting public that Gov. King does not adequately represent what is best for Maine. That’s going to be hard to do when they could not even persuade themselves of this. Any Democratic candidate with real potential hid out to avoid running against the governor, waiting for term limits to take care of him after 2002.

That’s a shame, because when former Rep. Longley tossed his hat in the ring, the gubernatorial race had the making of a real showdown. Should Mr. Longley win in the primaries, as expected, he could combine his strong support in the 1st Congressional District with a natural appeal in many places in the 2nd to give Gov. King a run. A strong Democrat could draw important distinctions among the conservative positions of Mr. Longley, the Chamber of Commerce view from the governor and his or her own.

Instead, that will be left to the independent, also known as unenrolled, candidates, such as Ms. LaMarche and, as of last week, environmental activist Nancy Oden. This is an opportunity for them to expand their campaigns beyond the strategy of just using them as platforms for issues. They can now think seriously about attracting large numbers of votes.

There is a question about whether the Democrats will get their necessary 5 percent of the vote to remain an official party in Maine. No doubt the faithful will turn out at the polls to save them from that humiliation. But it is a sad day when a campaign is forced to change slogans from “Win with (fill in the blank)” to “Help Keep Us From Losing Too Badly.”