Republican congressional candidate Richard Campbell prefers to use the “word on the street” for his polling data.

“I want this to be a people’s campaign, not a politician’s,” the former state representative from Orrington told a worker at Sterling Marine Supply during a recent campaign swing through Ellsworth.

Campbell, the party’s 2000 nominee for the 2nd Congressional District seat, is facing three Republican rivals this year in his quest to again earn a spot on the November ballot and replace outgoing U.S. Rep. John Baldacci.

Two years ago, after besting Mapleton farmer Lynwood Winslow in the party’s primary, the conservative Campbell suffered a sound defeat at the hands of the incumbent Democrat, who garnered a formidable 73 percent of the vote that November.

This year, it’s a different race, Campbell said, with the popular Baldacci running for governor, and Campbell the only contender for the 2nd District to have run a statewide campaign.

Campbell, 52, takes little stock in analysts’ projections that the GOP race will come down to Kevin Raye, a former chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, and Tim Woodcock, a former Bangor mayor and aide to then U.S. Sen. Bill Cohen.

“They’ll be fighting for the insiders,” Campbell said of the Cohen and Snowe proteges, both of whom boast gigantic campaign war chests in comparison to that of Campbell. “I’m the outsider.”

This year the outsider said he’s looking to build on the grass roots effort of 2000, when he bicycled his way around the sprawling district. The resulting name recognition has also come, in part, as a result of his distinctive red-and-black bumper stickers and campaign apparel featuring his coifed and mustached caricature, he said.

“Oh, I saw you on TV,” said more than one person on the receiving end of Campbell’s business card, a small packet of spruce seeds embossed with the candidate’s contact information.

On the campaign trail, Campbell has passed out more than 60,000 cards between the two races. On a recent day, the candidate parted with several more during a stop in Ellsworth, where he was accompanied by a pair of campaign aides.

Many of those in the Campbell camp are back from the 2000 campaign. And some never left.

“We never stopped,” said Janice Eldridge, the campaign’s Hancock County chairwoman, as she followed the candidate to Merrill Furniture on High Street. “Dick understands what the everyday person needs. He knows what it is to struggle and work hard.”

Indeed, the self-employed construction and development consultant, counts himself among those “everyday” people.

On the stump, Campbell, who spent eight years in the Legislature – four in leadership – stresses his 30 years of experience as a small-business man. At the peak of his construction business, which closed in 1991, he employed more than 50 people, he said.

“It’s time to expect more from your congressman. It’s time to expect an economic developer,” he said.

It’s his business experience – as well as a personal bankruptcy in 1993 – that helps define the candidate and makes him the most qualified to understand the trials of staying in business in the highly taxed state, he said.

Although he has bounced back financially, the bankruptcy still weighs heavily on Campbell, who said that as a lawmaker he looked to turn the experience into a way to spare small-business owners from the same difficulty.

“I use every experience, both positive and those that are challenging, as character building,” said Campbell, who sponsored several bills in Augusta that he said were designed to lessen the burden on small businesses.

Campbell also has spent much of his stump time pushing for veterans’ issues and blasting plans for a North Woods National Park and the federal government’s decision to list the wild Atlantic salmon as an endangered species.

In this race, the enthusiastic Campbell, citing admittedly unscientific polls conducted by campaign volunteers, likes his chances.

But Bowdoin College professor and Republican pollster Christian Potholm said Mainers give few politicians second chances.

“Normally if you lose, you stay lost,” said Potholm, whose rule of thumb does have its exceptions, most notably that of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who won a five-way race for the Senate seat two years after her 1994 defeat in the governor’s race.

Should one of his better-funded rivals prove pundits right, Campbell said he’d have a hard time hiding his disappointment.

“If they do, I don’t want to be involved in this thing we call politics,” Campbell said in closing. “The people will get what they deserve.”

On the NET: www.dickcampbell.com.