AUGUSTA – While campaign finance reform has been a major political issue in recent years, analysts in Maine don’t believe voters really care about where candidates get the cash to pay for all those posters and television ads. But they say voters should pay more attention to the sources of campaign funds.

“In all the campaigns I have been involved in, in every poll I have done since 1972, I have never seen this as a key issue for any voters,” said Bowdoin College professor Chris Potholm. “Politicians care and reporters care and government professors care, but I have seen no evidence that voters care.”

While he believes voters do take campaign financing into account, Bates College professor Douglas Hodgkin said, “It is not a major issue for most voters. Voters are more interested in the stands a candidate has taken on issues that are of concern to them.”

Colby College professor Tony Corrado agrees that voters do not look closely at campaign finances, but he said they should. Individuals and political action committees do not give large contributions to candidates simply to support good government, he said.

“I think it is very important that voters focus on where the money comes from because it can be an important indication of who is behind this candidate and what kind of interests they may represent once they get to Washington,” Corrado said.

Potholm, who also owns a polling firm, said campaign finances become an issue only when a candidate makes a particular contribution from some group an issue in a race. Even then, he said, the tactic may not have much of an impact.

But in some instances fund raising could be made into an issue with considerable impact, said Hodgkin.

“If some candidate took money from the Ku Klux Klan, I think that would upset some people and become an issue, and potentially a very significant one,” he said.

Potholm also pointed out that voters can look at self-financed campaigns with a decidedly mixed view. He said some voters like the idea that a candidate is willing to invest his or her own money in a race so they “don’t owe any favors.” At the same time, however, the voter may sense “a disconnect” with the wealthy candidate who is far better off financially than the voter.

“Voters like to have a connection with the candidate,” Corrado agreed. “That can be on an issue or something else they have in common with the candidate like a working-class background.”

University of Maine professor Amy Fried said several of her students were concerned when she recently brought up during class that some candidates were getting most of their contributions from out of state.

“There was a feeling that most [funding] should come from within the state,” she said. “There was some unease at candidates getting their funding from out of state.”

But Fried also believes most voters do not pay much attention to how campaigns are funded.

She said any importance voters put on sources of campaign funds is minor compared to the weight they give other issues such as health care, education policy or national defense.

“But, it probably should be more important,” she said.