AUGUSTA – Green Independent Party candidate Jonathan Carter dropped off piles of nomination petitions and $5 checks at the state ethics commission office Thursday in an attempt to qualify as the first gubernatorial candidate in the nation to run a 100 percent publicly financed campaign. If a minimum of 2,500 of the nearly 3,000 signatures are certified, Carter said, he could get more than $900,000 in taxpayer-financed “clean” funds through the campaign.

“This is truly a historic day for the state of Maine,” Carter said to a roomful of reporters and supporters at the office of the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.

If his nomination petitions and signatures are approved by the ethics commission, Carter could very well become the first Clean Elections candidate in the country to run for governor.

The reason for some hesitancy on the claim stems from a few “shades of distinction” raised by Micah Sifry, an analyst for an elections monitoring group called Public Campaign, which is based in Washington, D.C. Sifry emphasized that Anthony Pollina, a Progressive Party candidate, ran for governor in Vermont in 2000 under a similar program known as the Campaign Finance System. The significant difference between the two states’ programs lies in funding levels. The Maine Clean Elections Act of 1996 provides for 100 percent public funding, while Vermont limits public funding of gubernatorial candidates to 90 percent.”Still, that’s a pretty significant accomplishment for Carter,” Sifry said.

Carter turned in 400 more petitions than the 2,500 needed under state law and plans to submit another 600 with the accompanying $5 checks before the 5 p.m. April 16 deadline. He said his petitions reflect support from nearly every city and town in Maine. “I’d like to thank all those folks who gave $5 for democracy in the state,” Carter said. “It shows the depth of our campaign. Our campaign, which will be beholden only to the people of this great state, is going to flourish and move forward. This truly can be considered the first attempt to bring about true democracy by giving all of us an opportunity to participate in this process at the grass-roots level.”

The total collected from the $5 checks will be kept by the state and added to the Clean Election Fund.

A gubernatorial candidate in 1996, Carter picked up a little more than 6 percent of the vote to qualify the Greens as an official third party in Maine. To date, he is the only gubernatorial candidate to submit the required number of signatures to qualify as a Clean Elections candidate. The secretary of state still has to certify the petitions before Carter can officially be called a clean candidate. Jim Libby of Buxton is attempting to meet the Tuesday deadline in his bid to run as a publicly funded candidate in the GOP primary against Peter Cianchette of South Portland. Libby told The Associated Press on Thursday that he planned to deliver his paperwork and checks Friday afternoon.

The bulk of Carter’s remarks were offered in the form of thanks to voters, supporters and staff at the state ethics commission. But Carter also lobbed a few hostile comments toward U.S. Rep. John Baldacci, D-Bangor, who is running unopposed for his party’s nomination for governor. Recently, the Maine Democratic Party asked the ethics commission to investigate Carter’s signatures and checks to make sure he has complied with the provisions of the Clean Elections Act.

Since Carter has attracted Democratic voters in past campaigns, he reasoned that the Democratic Party’s challenge was made on Baldacci’s behalf, which he referred to as the “sad tactics of Baldacci Democrats.”

“Not all Democrats are like the Baldacci Democrats who have been trying to subvert [my] efforts to become a clean candidate for well over a year,” Carter said. “I call on John Baldacci to come clean himself and to denounce these tactics. I think we’re all aware that his silence on this issue speaks volumes.”

Not surprisingly, that did not happen. Instead, Donna Gormley, communications director for the Baldacci campaign, countered that Carter had misdirected his allegations and that Baldacci played no role in the request for an investigation at the ethics commission.

“We’re doing our campaign,” Gormley said. “The Maine Democratic Party is doing what it needs to do and we’re doing what we need to do.”

At state Democratic headquarters, party spokeswoman Christie Setzer defended her organization’s challenge of Carter’s petitions and checks and insisted that the party was only making sure that everyone’s paperwork was in order.

“It is our hope that the ethics commission will realize that it has a duty to make sure the law is followed,” she said.