At exactly 5:12 a.m. Wednesday, early risers watching the morning news on WLBZ 2 were being cajoled by U.S. Sen. Susan M. Collins into voting for Republican gubernatorial nominee Chandler Woodcock.

If those viewers were half-awake and came in bleary-eyed on the tail end of the political ad, they may have wondered whether that was actually Collins they saw on the tube. Fortunately, they had to wait only six minutes to see the same ad again on the same station.

Much like an alarm clock in snooze mode, repetitive television ads aired at odd hours of the day are about all that’s left for the three publicly funded candidates in the Blaine House race – and that’s no accident.

Democratic Gov. John E. Baldacci, the only major privately funded gubernatorial candidate, and the Maine Democratic Party carefully orchestrated the release of about a half-million dollars in political advertising after the June primary – but before the September deadline that would have triggered matching funds for his opponents.

Although Woodcock has received a little more than a million dollars in public funds and Green Independent Party nominee Pat LaMarche and independent Barbara Merrill have received about $850,000 each, much of the money was sent to them over the last three weeks – after the triggering date for matching funds for advocacy political ads. Meanwhile, the Baldacci campaign had the advantage of being able to buy up some of the choicest time slots for his advertising and continued to purchase television time this week.

As a result, his opponents have quickly learned that television advertising – the gold standard for most campaigns – is bought first come, first served. The publicly funded candidates were left with newfound fists of cash vying for whatever air time remained available in these last few days before Tuesday’s election.

“The Democrats worked the clock very effectively,” said Chris Jackson, Woodcock’s campaign manager. “This money is still extremely valuable, but we would have loved to have had it after Labor Day. Still, it’s better late than never.”

Woodcock, LaMarche and Merrill will direct most of their available campaign funds toward television between today and Tuesday when Mainers will go to the polls to decide who will govern the state for the next four years. LaMarche had some ads ready to go earlier in the campaign, but was waiting for the matching funds to make an ad buy. Merrill, who likes to find unique ways to get her message out, actually decided to produce her own half-hour television special, humbly dubbed, “On the road to making history.”

She said her decision to produce the show was prompted by what she has learned about what happens in political campaigns as they wind down in their final days.

“I think most of us look at modern politics reduced to 10-second sound bites and millions spent on negative attack ads, and we wish we could return to the days when there was more civility in our public discourse,” Merrill said. “So we’ve taken a page out of Ed Muskie’s 1954 campaign for governor, and we’ve purchased half-hour programs so we can take a few minutes and let voters really get a chance to know me and my views.”

Merrill’s show will air at noon and 6:30 p.m. Sunday on WVII-TV 7; at noon, 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Saturday and at 11 a.m., 4:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Sunday on WFVX; at 12:30 p.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday and at 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Sunday on WLBZ 2; and at 11 a.m. Sunday on WABI-TV 5.

This weekend, Merrill’s show will be in heavier rotation than “Seinfeld” reruns. The question for her and her publicly funded opponents lingers: Is it too much, too late?

“It makes it difficult to strategize this late,” said Amy Fried, a political science professor at the University of Maine. “The candidates would have wanted to know what kind of money they would have had ahead of time and plan it out. This clearly raises difficulties for them. These ads could have some impact, but they would have been more effective earlier.”

At the Critical Insights marketing survey group in Portland, MaryEllen FitzGerald surmised that the last-minute money was not “terribly effective” – regardless of the conventional wisdom in the media that “it’s only the last-minute stuff that counts.”

“Most of the campaigns that are not publicly financed have already reserved the prime time well in advance, so all the others are left with are these off-hours spots,” she said. “It’s true that a lot of people are still deliberating on the governor’s race after Labor Day, but a week or two before the election, most people have their minds made up. So these candidates are either just reinforcing their message or wasting it. The concept of equalizing the resources available to all candidates based on these last-minute disbursements is really a fallacy.”

Jim Melcher, a political scientist at the University of Maine at Farmington, believes that for some Mainers, the last-minute ads could resolve the question of whom to vote for Tuesday. He recalled recently watching WABI-TV 5 when he saw three identical ads for Pat LaMarche in less than a half-hour.

“At a certain level I wonder how effective that is,” he said. “But at the same time, I still think that those ads can be effective because we have such a crowded race. And it seems like the support for all the candidates, to some extent, is a little soft – so there’s still a lot of people who aren’t sure which way they want to go. Have most people made up their minds? Yes. For those who haven’t, however, the ads can still be effective. You know what they say in advertising: Half of the money spent on ads is wasted. If only we knew which half it was.”

Independent candidate Phillip Morris NaPier has raised less than $5 for his campaign. Polls show that he has the support of 1 percent of those who responded.

On the Web:

For access to the BDN’s coverage of Election 2006 and for profiles of the candidates in the gubernatorial and congressional races, go to www.bangordailynews.com.