Election year politics reared its ugly head uncharacteristically early this year, and Maine people have been treated to a close-up look at a Maine Democratic Party leadership struggling mightily to turn attention away from its failed policies.

I doubt Maine voters will be fooled.

The Democratic “Change the Subject” operation has been going on for some time, but picked up speed right after the primary elections, when Democrats immediately began a negative campaign against Republican gubernatorial candidate Chandler Woodcock.

This was easier, I’m guessing, than trying to explain how an incumbent governor could lose 25% of the Democratic primary election vote to a virtual unknown who spent almost no money on his campaign against the governor.

Next, Democrats tried to put a positive spin on the bad news coming from the Federal Reserve, which reported that only hurricane-ravaged Louisiana has a worse economy than Maine out of all the 50 states.

Democrats tried gamely to convince everyone that the state’s economy was really doing better than that, measured by the fact that tax revenues were above expectations. How Maine people paying more taxes than predicted is good for the economy is anyone’s guess, but the Democrats seem certain that it is.

The governor also touted the $150 million in cash reserves the state managed to amass over the past couple of years, though hospitals, who are owed more than $300 million by the state for care provided to Medicaid patients, were left to wonder how the governor can plausibly argue that the state has a surplus when it has failed to pay the bill it owes them.

Realizing that their spinning was fooling nobody, the Democrats decided to turn to the attack once again, and commissioned a poll to test various negative attack strategies. In looking for ways to assail independent gubernatorial candidate Barbara Merrill, for instance, they apparently asked those taking the poll what they thought of Merrill’s husband. Evidently, they think that Maine people, who suffer the highest taxes and worst business climate in America, will base their vote for governor on what they think of the candidates’ spouses.

To deflect attention from what their poll revealed about the negative campaign strategy they are developing, the Democrats then concocted the most preposterous “ten dollar ethics scandal” anyone had ever seen by claiming that Barbara Merrill and Chandler Woodcock, exchanging five dollar clean elections checks, constituted an attempt to “defraud” Maine people of public campaign financing funds. This tactic failed when editorials appeared ridiculing the charges.

With their negative attacks backfiring and their desperation to gain some kind of traction now unmistakably obvious, the Democrats then tried subcontracting out their dirty work, paying Bowdoin professor and political analyst Chris Potholm $7,000 to serve as an advisor to the Baldacci campaign. Coincidentally, I’m sure, he then wrote a distinctly unprofessorial attack piece against Chandler Woodcock, failing to acknowledge anywhere in the piece that he was on the Baldacci payroll.

Democrats also paid Strategic Marketing Services $13,500 to do some polling, and soon thereafter the firm released a poll showing Baldacci with a double-digit lead over Chandler Woodcock, which is at odds with every other poll done of the race, including a Rassmussen poll done at virtually the same time, all of which show the contest to be neck-and-neck.

Do any of these people have any credibility at this point?

Maine people can be forgiven for giving all these election-year antics scant attention. It is summer after all, and living where we do, we should enjoy every second of it.

What is important to note in all this is what is not being said. Where is the explanation of why Maine people should trust Maine’s Democrats to continue governing, when they have so little to show for having had control of both the Legislature and the Blaine House for four years? It is, after all, their policies that got us where we are.

If things are so good for Maine with their party in control, why aren’t we hearing more about all the wonderful things they’ve done for us?

If they have governed so well, why do they spend so much time attacking?

Maine people should enjoy the rest of the summer, but when election season comes in the fall, these are the questions they should remember to ask.

The rest of this nonsense, they can safely forget.

Sen. Carol Weston is the assistant Republican leader from Senate District 23