Would a simple ‘no’ do?

State Rep. Stephen Bowen was a victim during the last election of a “deceptive and misleading” campaign flier, says one of his constituents, who has filed a complaint to be heard Tuesday by the Maine Ethics Commission. But if the commission believes this, virtually any negative conclusion about an opponent’s record is out of bounds.

The facts are these: District 46 Democratic challenger David Miramant of Camden sent out a flier listing votes on five issues by incumbent Bowen that he found odious. On the left side of the flier was a characterization of the votes: protecting victims of domestic violence, protecting children from lead poisoning, urging President Bush to fix Medicare, helping small business and increasing the minimum wage. A roll call vote number is attached to each issue. On the right is a promise from Miramant to support these issues while saying that Bowen voted “no” on them.

That characterization, says the complaint, “distorts and misrepresents” Bowen’s record, a result that is repugnant to all who signed the Maine Code of Fair Campaign Practices, as Miramant did. Bowen, who lost to Miramant narrowly, seems serene about the matter. Of the flier, he told me, “This is the game that we play. I don’t use them, but many people do because they know they work.”

The game of campaigning, in its many forms, is a simplification out of necessity. Full accounts of legislative votes are long and complicated, not at all the sort of thing that would fit on a poster or in a 30-second television spot. For instance, among the accusations in the complaint to the Ethics Commission is that the votes on domestic violence and lead poisoning were merely procedural votes because they were on motions to “recede and concur” with the Senate.

But when a vote to recede and concur fails, the bill dies between the House and Senate – nothing merely procedural about that – which is what happened in the case of the domestic violence bill. LD 1938 would have notified someone who obtained a protection-from-abuse order if the person who was the subject of the order illegally tried to buy a gun. Maine’s chiefs of police liked the notification idea, as did the sheriff’s association. Local sportsmen had no objection, and the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee passed the bill unanimously.

Then Rep. Josh Tardy introduced an amendment backed by the National Rifle Association that addressed the handling of guns being held by police. The NRA amendment was a fundraising mechanism, a way to establish the GOP as the better friend of gun owners, but it had little to do with the bill so the Senate stripped it out and passed the bill without it. Ultimately, that meant the House would have had to agree with the Senate version – to recede and concur – for LD 1938 to pass. Bowen points out the bill could also have been tabled (put on indefinite hold) though what would have happened after that is unclear.

This was an important vote, one where domestic violence advocates spent a lot of time persuading lawmakers that it would save lives and that there was nothing anti-gun about it. Lawmakers knew by then that domestic violence was the primary cause of homicide in Maine, and that notification in the previous two years would have told 70 people that the person they feared most had illegally tried to purchase a weapon. Bowen, fellow Republicans and a few Democrats voted against the motion to agree with the Senate version, and the bill died.

In this case, however, public disgust was such that Democrats had popular support to take the original language to create a new bill and, unusually, bring it back. This version passed without opposition.

Back to the complaint: Even in these hypersensitive times, saying a politician voted “no” on an issue when he did vote “no” is not an ethical violation. The flier doesn’t assert that the vote represents Bowen’s entire history on the issue, nor does it conclude Bowen believes domestic violence is acceptable.

If the commission were to decide in favor of the complaint, no candidate would feel safe to criticize an opponent’s voting record without first reading a 10-minute disclaimer describing the limits of the criticism, the conditions under which the criticism applied and how, under any other circumstance, the opponent is a fine politician, notwithstanding past or future criticisms, also fully explained. The commission would, that is, effectively end the ability of one candidate to criticize another’s voting record. That would leave them, I suppose, with the option of criticizing each other personally.

Voters have ready access to more data on candidates than at any other time in history. To decide that the public may review legislative votes and decide to support a candidate (or not) based on those votes but an opponent may not distribute that same voting record refutes the First Amendment and common sense.

Bowen has it right: This is the game that we play. Thank goodness.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.