BANGOR – Former gubernatorial candidate Patricia LaMarche testified Monday in U.S. District Court that two job offers were withdrawn and she was fired from a consulting job within 16 hours of her arrest for drunken driving four years ago in Brewer.

The former Green Party candidate, who now works as a disc jockey in Augusta, sued the former police officer in federal court in January 2002 for stopping her on March 10, 1999. LaMarche claims that Daniel Costain did not have probable cause to stop or arrest her. Costain, now a Newport businessman, has denied the allegations in the lawsuit.

The 42-year-old woman is seeking lost wages, punitive damages and attorneys’ fees. To win, she must prove that given the same circumstances, no reasonable officer would have stopped her or arrested her.

LaMarche spent most of Monday being questioned by her attorney, Thomas Connolly of Portland. Coincidentally, Connolly was the Democratic candidate for governor in 1998, the same year LaMarche ran as the Green Party candidate.

A well-known Bangor television and radio personality in the early 1990s, LaMarche testified that she moved to Portland in 1996 to work at a talk radio station. She told the jury Monday that the job was going well until she was arrested in May 1997 for drunken driving.

LaMarche testified that she told the police officer who arrested her that a Breathalyzer test wasn’t necessary because she was obviously guilty since she’d failed the heel-to-toe test. She received an enhanced sentence for refusing to take that test and was sentence to 96 hours in jail, hundreds of hours of community service, $825 in fines, and her license was suspended for 90 days. She also was fired from her job, but spoke publicly in newspaper stories about the experience.

Despite the arrest, she said Monday, she captured 7 percent of the vote in 1998, enabling the Green Party to gain official party status. Her good showing also piqued radio stations’ interest in hiring her. One of the reasons she was in the Bangor area the day she was arrested was to try out for a radio job.

LaMarche told the court that after spending March 9 working her consulting job at Maine Adaptive Sports’ Bangor office, she met friends at Benjamin’s on Franklin Street and drank a pint of beer. She then rode to Orono for dinner at Margarita’s. She admitted ordering two drinks but said she did not drink much of one because it was too salty. About 8:30 p.m., she and her friend arrived at the Bounty in the Holiday Inn on Main Street in Bangor.

LaMarche testified that she ordered a bottle of beer while at the dance club but drank less than a third of it. She told the court that she got in her car and followed her friend over the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge to Brewer when the bar closed.

She told the court that she came to a complete stop at the flashing red light, before turning right onto South Main Street in Brewer. She said that she saw flashing blue lights and pulled over immediately. She said Costain told her he’d stopped her for failing to stop at the light. He also asked her if she’d been drinking. LaMarche testified that she told him yes.

Costain, according to La-Marche, spoke to her in angry tones and intimidated her while he administered a series of field sobriety tests. Under questioning from Connolly, she testified that Costain kept his hand on his gun when she did the tests.

She said that Costain placed her under arrest and took her to the Penobscot County Jail. There, LaMarche said he took her into a room to administer a Breathalyzer test. She said that when she refused to take the test and asked to call a lawyer, Costain “blew a gasket.”

LaMarche said that she called a Bangor attorney who lived within a few minutes of the jail, but refused to take the test until he arrived. Costain recorded that she’d refused to take the test. LaMarche testified that she agreed to take the test from another officer, but that by the time she finished speaking with her attorney, she was told too much time had passed since her arrest for the test to be valid.

Under cross-examination by Costain’s attorney, Edward Benjamin Jr. of Portland, La-Marche also admitted that she couldn’t remember which hand the officer had kept on his gun and acknowledged that at some point his hand could have been on a different part of his utility belt. She maintained on the stand that she had been sober and passed Costain’s tests, but admitted that she did not perform them exactly as instructed.

Cross-examination of La-Marche is scheduled to resume in federal court this morning. The trial is expected to go to the jury of seven men and one woman by the end of the week.