AUGUSTA – Gubernatorial campaign jockeying is already under way, and that includes discussions of how to pay for a race for the Blaine House.

Decisions about whether to run are being shaped now, despite the fact that preliminary party voting is more than a year off.

“If you’re not the best-known candidate in the world, start early is the mantra,” says George Smith of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, a longtime political observer and activist.

The calculus for candidates is more complicated than in the past because, for the first time, those hoping to become Maine’s next governor have an option to accept public financing – that is, taxpayer money – if they agree to forgo private donations.

To date, however, the state Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices that oversees implementation of the Clean Election system has yet to set the amounts that publicly funded gubernatorial candidates can expect in next year’s primary and general elections.

Panelists may take up the matter soon. But even before they do, rough estimates can be deduced.

Under the package of legal provisions approved by Maine voters in a 1996 referendum, candidates financed through the Clean Election system can expect to receive three-quarters of the average amount spent by candidates for the same office in the previous two elections.

The resultant amounts, while modest, were enough to attract roughly one-third of the more than 350 candidates for the Maine Legislature last year.

Clean Election Senate candidates in contested general elections received a basic allocation of $12,910. For publicly financed House candidates in contested general election races, basic state funding was $3,252.

Publicly financed candidates may get up to twice as much more to keep pace with privately funded opponents.

Applying the same funding formula for gubernatorial candidates, according to ethics commission director Bill Hain, publicly financed general election contestants next year could stand to receive a base of about $215,000.

That would be on top of about $110,000 that would have gone to Clean Election entrants in a party primary.

At first blush, such sums for a gubernatorial race look big for a fringe candidate but small for a contender, given spending levels reached by winners and their chief rivals in the recent past.

But consider: Matching money available through the Clean Elections system could effectively triple the amounts. And simultaneously, traditional privately funded candidates face a new limit in this election cycle: no single donation from any source may exceed $500.

Previously, individuals could give up to $1,000 to a candidate per election, and political action committees could give up to five times as much.

Consider further that some champions of the public financing system think adjustments might be in order in time to kick in for the 2002 governor’s race.

“The problem is the anomaly of the last gubernatorial election,” says George Christie of Maine Citizens for Clean Elections.

Heading into 1998, independent incumbent Angus King was such an odds-on favorite – highly popular and capable of writing substantial checks of his own to press an election drive – that the most prominent Democrats and Republicans positioned to challenge him chose not to do so.

The subsequent campaign was without much suspense or financial expenditure.

Whereas four years earlier, the five candidates for governor in November spent a total of more than $2.25 million on the general election, the five general election candidates for governor in 1998 spent a total of only about $650,000 for their November election.

The low level of spending in 1998 serves to skew, in the view of Christie and others, the Clean Election funding formula, which involves averaging spending in 1994 and 1998, for this first experiment in gubernatorial election financing.

“We recognize the issue,” Christie said, adding that some Clean Elections advocates are considering proposals to alter the formula during this year’s legislative session.

With the outcome of any such effort in the Legislature uncertain, what are would-be candidates to do for now?

Look back two election cycles.

Running largely on his own money, King began campaigning for the 1994 gubernatorial election in April 1993, according to Kay Rand, his top aide at the State House who served as his campaign manager back then.

Rand said King’s campaign shifted into earnest action in early 1994. That history may well be of interest to potential aspirants for the governorship this time around who have not made up their minds whether to run and, if they do, how to pay to promote their candidacies.

Republican Sen. Peter Mills of Skowhegan, among the undecided, noted that the Clean Election system’s qualifying provisions make it unlikely that a publicly financed candidate could obtain state funding much before the end of the current calendar year.

Still, he says that would not necessarily be a major drawback.

Except perhaps for some public opinion polling, he said, “I can’t believe that it really makes sense to spend any money before January.”