AUGUSTA – Twenty Green Independent Party candidates ran for the Legislature in 2004, but the number this year has dwindled to 12, reducing the likelihood that the party will make big gains in the November election.

Greens have been running candidates for more than a decade but their only seat in the 186-member Legislature is the one held by Rep. John Eder of Portland, who was elected in 2002 and is seeking a third term this fall.

Eder and others within the party dismiss suggestions that this year’s smaller number of legislative candidates is a sign that the Greens are on the political decline.

They say activists who might otherwise have run for seats in the House or Senate set aside those goals to work for the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Patricia LaMarche of Yarmouth, who is seeking to qualify for public financing.

John Rensenbrink, a co-founder of the Greens in Maine, said the number of candidates could climb as high as 30 in 2008, when there won’t be a gubernatorial election. And Eder speculated that his party could expand to the point that it runs 40 or 50 legislative candidates in a decade or so.

LaMarche won 7 percent of the vote in her 1998 race for governor and went on to become the Green party’s vice presidential nominee in 2004.

LaMarche faced a tougher challenge than Democratic or Republican candidates in getting the signatures of 2,000 party members by March 15 to get on the June primary ballot.

Gov. John Baldacci and fellow Democrat Christopher Miller had about 319,000 enrolled party members to choose from, while Republicans David Emery, Peter Mills and Chandler Woodcock could turn to a pool of about 287,000 in that party.

But with only 24,000 enrolled Greens, LaMarche had far fewer prospective petition signers and said she relied on more than 400 volunteers to get the job done.