Ever since Maine voters passed the Clean Elections Act in 1996, this state has been held up nationwide as a leader in election reform. For the last five years, as director of the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, William Hain III has had a front-row seat from which to watch the implementation of this landmark experiment in publicly funded campaigns.

Mr. Hain’s experience is a lesson in why it’s not always a good idea to sit too close. Now, having witnessed the intentional, even energetic, perversion of this law in its first two general elections, Mr. Hain has resigned.

This is a regrettable resignation, and not just because Mr. Hain has proven himself a good and devoted public servant and Maine needs all of those it can get. It is especially regrettable because Mr. Hain is right. The law has been perverted and the commission, his commission, charged with preventing it has been hopelessly politicized.

The law itself has done much good. No longer is the pool of candidates for state offices substantially limited to the politically connected with friends and supporters able to pony up the tens of thousands of dollars needed to run a credible campaign. Any newcomer with the energy to go door-to-door collecting those $5 qualifying contributions can gain access to enough public funding to be competitive.

The many problems that have surfaced in the law’s first use in 2000 and its second in 2002 were caused not by newcomers, but by those who should know, and behave, better. Legislative leaders of both major parties have run Clean for their personal re-election campaigns, yet have solicited huge sums of private money for their political action committees to dole out to other candidates, thus buying votes

for their re-election to leadership positions. Both parties have shoved private PAC money independent expenditures into their Clean campaigns, forcing absurd levels of public matching funds into the other side’s Clean campaign – recall the special state Senate election in Portland last year in which each vote cost more than $12 in public money.

In 2002, a privately funded incumbent pre-paid campaign expenses before the primary to deny the Clean opponent a level playing field. And just to make certain the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices did not take this watchdog thing too seriously, the Legislature in 2001 changed the law so that party leaders now get to chose who watches them.

Closing by statute the loopholes legislative and party leaders have so expertly opened will not be easy; tinkering with laws passed by public referendum always is tricky; even the suggestion that the word “Clean” has an unnecessarily pejorative connotation for privately funded candidates has been met with objections that the Legislature would subvert the will of the people. That concern about one word now seems awfully minor, given the lexicon of subversions written by legislative leaders and the parties.

The Clean Election Act is one of those laws that work only if adhered to in the spirit, not merely the letter. Those who are in position to lead by example has failed utterly and the result is a vacancy in ethics that goes far beyond a job opening with the Commission Mr. Hain once led.