This article says the Maine Green Party’s gubernatorial candidate, Lynne Williams, will not seek public funding this year. Of course, Green Party candidates for the Maine legislature can be expected to seek and obtain public funding this year.
As the article points out, due to a good change in the election law last year, qualified parties in Maine no longer need to poll 5% of the vote for either Governor or President. Instead, they remain ballot-qualified if they have at least 10,000 registered members who cast a vote in November. The Green Party has over 34,000 registered members so it probably will retain its spot on the ballot, whether it polls 5% for Governor this year or not.
It is a sad day for third parties in Maine.
Pingback: ‘Greens No Longer Clean’ | Independent Political Report
The article also points out one big reason for the candidate’s decision: the higher threshold to qualify for public funds. That’s one of the big problems with the bills in Congress now, HR1826(/S752?) and HR2056: thresholds high enough to have the effect of giving an advantage to older established parties with “institution-alized” donor bases over new parties or independent candidates.
A fairer, cleaner, better approach would be to lower the threshold as far as possible — the borderline for reporting campaign finances, perhaps, or for Federal races the level defining who the FEC regards as officially candidates — and then just matching funds actually raised/received (or, if big but capped chunks of public financing per candidate are necessary, maybe slicing up and proportioning out those chunks would work).
Hi,Correction. There are 34,000 Maine voters enrolled in the Maine Green Independent Party, not 13,000.
Thanks for the correction, John. I’ll fix it.