AUGUSTA – The Maine Republican Party called on Democratic legislative leaders Wednesday to admonish lawmakers for “actively confronting and discouraging” business owners from allowing people’s veto proponents to gather signatures on their premises. Democrats countered that what is being characterized as intimidation was only an attempt to deliver information.

Republicans support a citizens referendum initiative to veto a $450 million borrowing component of the $5.7 billion state budget passed by majority Democrats in March. Supporters need to gather 50,519 signatures by June 28 to get the referendum question on the statewide ballot in November.

Democrats oppose the citizens veto effort, labeling it the “politicians’ veto” because State House Republicans helped launch it.

Although Sen. Joseph Perry, D-Bangor, and Rep. Jeremy Fischer, D-Presque Isle, maintain they never encouraged merchants to eject signature gatherers on or near their premises, they did have conversations with business managers earlier this month that laid out some negative consequences for allowing the referendum activity to take place at their establishments.

“We feel that it is detrimental to the long-term well-being of our representative government for sitting elected officials to engage in strong-arming tactics against those wishing to participate in the political process,” Maine GOP Chairman Randy Bumps said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

Ultimately, the Aroostook Centre Mall in Presque Isle wound up canceling an agreement with the pro-veto Don’t Mortgage ME group that would have allowed signature gatherers to set up on the premises on May 7. Richard Campbell, a former Republican legislator from Holden and an organizer for the group, said the owner of one of the Leadbetter stores in Bangor also changed his mind about allowing signature gatherers to operate at his business Saturday after he had been contacted by Perry.

During a taped interview Monday with State House reporters and Senate Democratic leaders, Perry said he contacted the Leadbetter store manager as a longtime friend of the family. Perry said he felt obliged to inform the store owner that allowing signature gathering for the people’s veto at his store would “offend and alienate” some of his customers.

Fischer said he was contacted by the manager of the Aroostook Centre Mall and asked what he knew about the people’s veto group, which opposes the $450 million borrowing component of the state’s $5.7 billion Democratic majority budget. Fischer said the Aroostook Centre Mall has long had a policy of not allowing “politics” on the premises. In a taped interview with reporters, Fischer said Monday:

“And I simply said you know I think that if you let in one person in the place, then you’re going to let in people who want to discourage people and then this is on Mother’s Day weekend. Do you want that on Mother’s Day weekend?” Fischer said.

After indicating that competing political groups at the mall could be bad for business during a holiday weekend, Fischer’s ensuing remarks Monday seemed to be at odds with his previous statement.

“And definitely, we didn’t discourage them from doing anything,” Fischer said. “We said you can do whatever you want, but when I talked with the mall manager from Presque Isle, I said, ‘You know, you do have to understand this opens up politics in your mall,’ and she said, ‘That’s not something that we want to do.’ And they made the decision with their legal counsel that they just didn’t want either side doing anything on their property.”

In clarifying his position in a second taped interview Wednesday, Fischer said he never made the “What about Mother’s Day?” statement to the mall manager in the context conveyed to reporters Monday. Fischer said, instead, he meant to say that the mall manager had brought up the implications posed by competing factions in the mall during Mother’s Day and he had simply agreed with her.

“Basically, yes, she said as an afterthought, she said, ‘We need to call our legal counsel, gee, we don’t need this on Mother’s Day weekend’,” Fischer said. “And when she called back we had another conversation, she gave her decision … and I said, ‘You don’t want all this on Mother’s Day weekend.’ It’s not a threat or intimidation, and that’s the most important part.”

Fischer also said his Monday statement to the mall manager discussing how allowing the petitioners in “opens up politics in your mall” was not a warning of possible counteractivity by opponents of the people’s veto effort. Instead, he said his statement was meant to remind the mall manager of the facility’s longtime policy of not allowing politics in the mall.

The lawmakers’ activities were intended to inform the business owners, Maine Senate President Beth Edmonds, D-Freeport, said Wednesday. But Campbell didn’t see it that way.

“They contacted these business owners with the intention of stopping us from collecting signatures,” Campbell said. “Now they’re trying to backpedal and pass it off as information. They both laid out negative “what-if’ scenarios about what could happen if the signature gathering was allowed. It bothered me when I heard about it and it still does.”

In their letter to Democratic legislative leaders, Republicans at GOP headquarters suggested that encouraging Democratic lawmakers to interfere with the people’s veto signature gathering effort was “a caucus position.” Assistant Senate Democratic leader Kenneth Gagnon of Waterville said Monday he supported any effort to frustrate the signature gathering since the mere presence of the people’s veto activity could be a factor in the potential downgrading of the state’s bond rating. Senate Democratic leader Michael Brennan of Portland said Wednesday that Gagnon’s statements only reflected his personal opinion.

“It’s a nonissue,” said Edmonds. “Nobody intimidated anybody. Nobody threatened anybody. Nobody did anything bad. All they did was give people information and apparently the business owners involved took that information and made their own decisions about it.”

House Speaker John Richardson, D-Freeport, said he had saw no “factual basis” for Bumps’ or Campbell’s assertions concerning Fischer and Perry.

“If it were true, I think the law, in fact, allows for the activity,” he said. “It’s not my intention to censure or admonish members of the Legislature. But I would ask, however, that every member consider carefully whether the pursuit of a particular political cause is worthy of the negative image it attaches [to] the Legislature and of the damage that might be done to true civic involvement and not civic involvement manipulated through a politicians’ veto.”