Four years ago, the Maine Greens, coming off a respectable effort in the gubernatorial campaign had official ballot status, high hopes and plans for a major registration drive and candidate hunt.

Today, the Maine Greens, coming off a respectable effort in the gubernatorial campaign have official ballot status, high hopes and plans for a major registration drive and candidate hunt.

For a bunch of progressives, these Greens haven’t moved very far in the last four years.

Leaders of the Maine Greens said the right things at their annual convention this weekend. If the party is to become a player and not just a gadfly, it must expand its focus from the big-ticket statewide offices to the local level. It must sign up members, get them on the ballot, get them elected to the Legislature and local offices.

That’s exactly what Green leaders said after the 1994 gubernatorial race and the official status that followed. It didn’t happen. The Greens had two candidates for the Legislature then; they had two in 1998.

There is one notable difference between then and now. It has nothing with political outsiders fighting the system, but with the system doing the right thing by the outsiders. It was the Republicans and the Democrats in this Legislature that changed Maine’s ballot access law from one that had new parties in a two-year cycle of birth and death to one gives them an actual life expectancy.

Without having to get 5 percent in presidential elections, new parties now can take root. The still-required 5 percent in gubernatorial elections should be an easy bar to clear for any responsible party – left, right or elsewhere – with a clear message a reasonably energetic candidate. The question, of course, is what these new parties will do with their official status.

The best thing they can do is to re-invigorate the public’s interest in the electoral process. Declining voter participation is distressing; the apathy and resignation behind it are alarming. New parties can get new people into politics; they can get new voices into the debate and they can do that best at the local level.

The old Maine Greens tried to get their candidates elected governor. The new Maine Greens want to get 10,000 voters registered and 50 legislative candidates on the ballot for the 2000 election. The successful Maine Greens will pursue those goals, but first they’ll concentrate on getting people elected to county offices, town councils and school boards.

But not to bring to those offices a particular Green sensibility. Awarding bids, filling potholes, negotiating contracts and all the other nuts-and-bolts of local government don’t have as much to do with profound political philosophy as they do with just showing up for meetings, putting in a lot of long hours, demonstrating the ability to compromise and to build consensus.

The Maine Greens aren’t exploring uncharted territory here. Thanks to lenient ballot-access laws, alternative parties are well established in many Western states, such as California, Oregon and Alaska. None of those states has ever had a third-party governor or member of Congress, but there are a lot of city councilors, water-district commissioners and, now, more and more state legislators. That’s hard work — and that’s the difference between just forming a party and actually building one.