BAR HARBOR – There was more than one shade of Green visible in Maine this weekend.

Jonathan Carter, the Green Independent Party candidate for governor, was invited Saturday to a gathering of national delegates of the Green Party USA at College of the Atlantic to speak about Maine’s Clean Election Act. Carter told the delegates, whose party believes in activism over achieving public office, that he has a serious chance of becoming the state’s next governor.

Carter, whose Green Independent Party is part of another group, the Green Party of the United States, said he expects to receive as much as $900,000 in public funding for his Blaine House bid.

Carter spoke to the 20 or so delegates after they had discussed other issues such as the use of pesticides and protecting the Gulf of Maine.

Outside the room, Carter acknowledged in an interview that though everyone at the event was Green by name, the delegates were not necessarily his supporters. Carter said he helped establish the Green Party of the United States, a national organization separate from the Green Party USA.

Nancy Oden, a Jonesboro resident who is on the national committee of Green Party USA and an organizer of the Bar Harbor gathering, also noted the differences between the two parties.

They have common goals – wanting to rid the planet of pesticides and to eliminate the influence of big corporations on the democratic process – but she said they disagree on how these goals should be realized, she said.

Oden’s group believes grass-roots activism in various regions of the country is more important than being elected to office. While candidacy for office can provide a good venue for promoting Green ideals and she herself has run for office, getting elected should never take precedence over grass-roots activism, she said.

“If you’re doing a lot of one thing, you’re not doing a lot of another,” Oden said.

Becoming part of the system to change it from within has never been effective, she said. Only by pressuring the system from the outside can activists produce the desired results, she said.

“It is the only thing that has ever worked,” Oden said.

Carter, apparently, is serious about running and winning.

According to a statement on his campaign Web site, www.cartergov.com, Carter’s candidacy is “not about making a statement” but about “seriously attempting to take back the Blaine House for the people of Maine.”

During his talk Saturday, Carter focused on Maine’s Clean Election Act, which took effect in 1999 and created a voluntary system of public financing for gubernatorial and legislative races in Maine. In response to a question, Carter told the delegates that the state’s economy, a single-payer health care system and property tax reform were all subjects he planned to address during his Blaine House bid.

Carter said that because of the public money he will get from Maine’s Clean Election Act, his candidacy would have a “mind-boggling” impact on the governor’s race, whether he wins or not.

“The political process has been corrupted,” Carter said. “The political parties that are run by big corporations and special interests want to see [the Clean Election Act] disappear.”

The gubernatorial candidate also said that Green philosophies are not just environmental in nature or belonging to just one party. “I honestly believe Green values cross all other political party lines,” Carter said.

Some of the Green Party USA delegates, apparently, were less accepting of this pan-political idea about Green ideals.

After Carter had left, Dr. Brian Tokar, a delegate and activist against genetic engineering, disputed the idea that conventional Republicans and Democrats share his own beliefs. “It’s total crap, and I imagine people here see through that,” Tokar said.

Oden said she was not sure whether she or her party would endorse Carter’s candidacy for governor or not.

“I don’t know enough about what he stands for yet,” she said.

The delegates heard from a slate of other speakers, including Alexander Cockburn, a columnist for The Nation magazine.