ETHICS PUSHED

Fourteen weeks before the election and already the gubernatorial race has multiple ethics complaints. Who said the campaigns weren’t filled with overachievers? But for all the bluster and newspaper ink devoted to the alleged crimes, no one yet has enough information to pronounce guilt, and the candidate (and his or her surrogates) who endures these accusations calmly is the one who will look best when they blow over.

The first of two issues is the charge of a trade of five $5 qualifying contributions between the teams for Republican Chandler Woodcock (a total of three checks) and independent Barbara Merrill (two checks). Democrats, who raised the charge, point to Maine statute, which is clear though largely untested. It says, “A payment, gift or anything of value may not be given in exchange for a qualifying contribution.”

But Sen. Woodcock says that he and Rep. Merrill gave each other $5 checks in the spirit of supporting the Clean Election system, recognizing its tough standard of requiring 2,500 separate $5 contributions to qualify for public financing. The fact that 45 legislative Republicans also gave to Rep. Merrill merely reveals that the GOP sees her as a way to help them defeat the governor.

That’s not anything to be proud of, but absent evidence of a larger pattern of contribution swapping, the exchange between Rep. Merrill and Sen. Woodcock is at most a minor mistake in which the absence of these contributions would not have affected whether the candidates met the qualifying standard.

It is not close to the level of seriousness of the second alleged ethics violation, a push poll by the state Democratic Party, according to Rep. Merrill, a former Democrat. Were this charges to be confirmed, Gov. John Baldacci’s campaign would be hurt and the party would be looking for new staffers.

But, as with the contributions, the charges have gotten ahead of the evidence. The public has yet to see the text of the poll Democrats say they had a company conduct earlier this month and which they emphatically deny was a push poll – one that would include false and negative information about opponents under the guise of a fair set of questions.

As with the qualifying contributions, this could be easily handled through the Maine Ethics Commission. Democrats would be wise to send the commission the text of their poll now and get the issue behind them, but failing that the commission could request the text and quickly decide whether the poll was legitimate. Push polls generally aren’t subtle.

Speculating about which campaign did what, however, is a waste of energy. Maine has numerous more serious issues to fight about – budgets and TABOR, health care and education. Let the commission at least hear the arguments before anyone produces a verdict.