AUGUSTA – An organization known for embracing liberal causes announced its support Tuesday of gubernatorial hopeful John Baldacci claiming that the Bangor Democrat was the only candidate who could unite opposing factions at the State House.

George Christie of the Dirigo Alliance said his coalition of 14 organizations representing 80,000 Mainers had conducted interviews with Green Independent Party candidate Jonathan Carter and Baldacci. It was the group’s board of directors – not its membership – that endorsed Baldacci.

“It’s clear that both John Baldacci and Jonathan Carter have platforms that we as a progressive coalition could support,” Christie said. “But it takes more than just issues and pronouncements to govern this state and make this platform become a reality. John Baldacci has a real track record of bringing people together and building coalitions and leaving nobody behind in solving tough issues.”

The Carter campaign failed the credibility test for the alliance, largely because of what Christie described as the candidate’s possessing a penchant for “making pronouncements” and being “divisive.”

“So for us the choice was very clear,” Christie said. “John Baldacci stood head and shoulders above Jonathan Carter in terms of the way that he would go about governing and his ability to actually get these things done and making the things that we care about a reality.”

Carter dismissed the group’s endorsement of his opponent as “meaningless,” explaining that the Dirigo Alliance never had a reputation as a fair dealer.

“They are a Democratic Party front and have been for years,” Carter said. “They’ve always supported Democrats and they never poll their membership. It’s just an elite group of Democratic Party ideologues like George Christie who are willing to abandon the values of an organization in the interests of political expediency. And I think that’s really too bad.”

The alliance’s endorsement was as much of an ideological blow for Carter as it was a windfall for Baldacci. And it represented the third consecutive abandonment of the Green candidate perceived by many election watchers as the most liberal in the field of four by a liberal advocacy group.

Earlier this year, the Sierra Club endorsed Baldacci over Carter. The Sierra Club and Carter have long shared a common passion for the creation of a North Woods National Park in northern Maine and revamping state timber harvesting laws. Also, Baldacci was endorsed last week by the Maine People’s Alliance, an organization that has lobbied tirelessly for a single-payer health care system, one of the cornerstones of Carter’s campaign.

But Tuesday’s announcement by the Dirigo Alliance reflected the greatest degree of irony for Carter who has failed to gain the backing of three lobbying groups that many thought would support the most liberal candidate. Carter is the first gubernatorial candidate to be publicly funded under the Maine Clean Elections Act – an initiative that was almost single-handedly advanced by the Dirigo Alliance. Christie was pleased that the law was working, but Carter’s significance as the first publicly funded gubernatorial candidate and his positions shared by the alliance were not enough, he said, to justify an endorsement.

“We needed to look at who was going to get the work done,” Christie said.