PORTLAND – The wife of one-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tom Connolly said she’s proud of her husband’s devotion to political causes even though it ended up getting him arrested at gunpoint on Halloween.

Connolly, 49, of Scarborough, was arrested after police were alerted to a man carrying a sign that said “I love the Taliban” and waving a gun. The gun was a plastic replica of an AK-47; the sign was actually a reference to TABOR, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

Elaine Connolly, who arrived with their 3-year-old son to retrieve her husband from jail on Tuesday, stood by her man. She said she even helped him make the anti-TABOR sign he was carrying when he was arrested while wearing an Osama bin Laden costume.

“Any time you’re engaging in guerrilla theater, there’s a risk,” she said. “He knew he was taking one. I knew he was taking one.”

The Halloween prank, in which Tom Connolly was in the costume while motorists passed by on I-295, made the news from coast to coast.

Connolly, who was charged with criminal threatening by South Portland police, said the experience was sobering and that he had canceled his plans for seven days of roadside theater leading up to the election.

William Childs, a friend of Connolly’s, said a key question in the criminal threatening charge is whether Connolly pointed the toy gun at

anyone.

For Halloween, he said he intended to dress as George Washington, but the mask was too tight. He ended up wearing the bin Laden outfit that he purchased on eBay. It included a rubber mask, along with the plastic gun, dynamite and grenades.

Connolly has been known as the man behind the President Bush mask who occasionally appears across the state while dancing a herky-jerky jig.

But South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins said the terrorist garb went too far. “This redefines the word ‘stupid,”‘ he said.

The South Portland incident wasn’t the only Halloween costume that prompted an armed police response on Tuesday.

In Topsham, police took up tactical positions around a Hannaford supermarket Tuesday morning after customers reported seeing a gun-toting man in combat uniform, a vest and a bandanna enter the Topsham Fair Mall.

The suspect turned out to be the store manager, dressed in a Halloween costume and armed with a paintball gun, said Lt. Christopher Lewis. No charges will be filed in the Topsham incident, officials said.