Maine’s first municipal clean elections program shows promise for local public funding

In order to qualify and receive funding from the clean elections fund, city candidates had to show they had community support by collecting $5 contributions from registered voters in their district.(Getty Images)

Portland’s November election, the first under the city’s new clean elections program, saw far less campaign spending than comparable past years, which advocates say bodes well for the state’s first municipal public campaign finance system. 

According to a report from Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, the nonpartisan nonprofit that kickstarted efforts to create the municipal program around 2017, seven out of 13 candidates in the contested races opted into the program. A total of $200,321 was spent, and the largest campaign spent $78,498. In Portland’s last mayoral race in 2019, $330,239 was spent, with two candidates spending well over $100,000 each.

Portland is the first city in Maine to run a clean elections program, though such programs have been used for state-level elections dating back to 2000, when the Maine Clean Election Act had its first run with candidates for the Maine House of Representatives and Senate. 

Participation at the state level has grown since and the early success of Portland’s program, one of the smallest cities nationwide to run a full public funding program, is encouraging for the possibility of expanding to other localities, said Anna Kellar, executive director of MCCE. 

In order to qualify and receive funding, city candidates had to show they had community support by collecting $5 contributions, with totals needed varying by office sought, from registered voters in their district, which the city verified.

These requirements are intended to encourage broader constituent involvement and the results of the first year of Portland’s program generally found that to be the case, with 1,260 $5 qualifying contributions made to the seven Clean Elections candidates compared with approximately 289 people who gave to the six privately financed candidates. Those are approximate figures, given that one person could have donated to multiple candidates. 

Aside from figures, the funding had different sources. All the qualifying contributions for Clean Elections candidates had to come from Portland voters, whereas 42% of private donations came from outside of the city and 13% from outside of the state.

The differences in participation can also likely be attributed to accessibility, with a $5 donation being much less than the average $279 for private donations, Kellar explained. 

“You don’t feel like, ‘Oh, you know, I can’t give somebody $500 who’s running for mayor. Well, what’s the point?’ No, every single person’s $5 is equally valuable,” Kellar said. 

‘Knocking doors in June’

The philosophy of clean elections jived with many candidates’ values because they said it required reaching outside of their own personal networks earlier and giving equal treatment to all voters. 

As part of the report, MCCE researchers interviewed 12 of the 13 candidates for mayor, city council and school board who ran in contested races, lacking the perspective of one of the privately funded candidates. 

“The fact that I had to start door-knocking in June, had to talk to people about the system and why I wanted to run was important,” said a candidate for city council. “Knocking doors in June — who does that? You’re asking for $5, which is not a lot, but for some people it is. It forced me to recognize the economic diversity in the district. For some people it was easy, and others were digging for quarters.”

Some said the Clean Elections program essentially gave them the opportunity to run for office, as the amount of funding available through the program was more than they would have been able to raise privately. 

Others said the requirement of collecting many small contributions helped to prevent conflicts of interest. “Because it’s a small town, so of course, anyone who’s interested enough to donate money to candidates is probably going to be before the city council at some point for something, even if they didn’t know what at the time they were giving me money,” a mayoral candidate explained. 

Room for improvement

However, candidates who did, and didn’t, participate in the program said the paperwork and requirements were at times a barrier to their participation and that of voters.

“The biggest recommendation that we heard from basically everyone, and we knew this would be the case, was that we needed to have a way for people to give a contribution online or by credit card,” Kellar said, as only cash or checks were accepted during the program’s first year. “It’s making it harder for people to participate, and that’s going against the goals of the program.”

It was a matter of timing, Kellar explained, given the short preparation period heading into the 2023 election cycle.

Portland’s Clean Elections program was about seven years in the making — from initial signature collection, procedural delays resulting in the state supreme court weighing in and a charter commission recommendation that then sent the question to the voters, who approved the program in 2022, leaving just months before the start of the first cycle under the new program. 

An online payment portal will be available for the 2024 election cycle. Ashley Rand, Portland’s city clerk, said the plan is for the portal to go live June 1. 

The charter commission also required that the city clerk establish a searchable, public database of all registrations and campaign finance reports, which has yet to be completed. 

Rand said the city received two bids for the online database last year, both at about a half million dollars for implementation with a $75 annual fee. “When we brought that to Council, they did not put it in the budget due to the cost,” Rand said. “For now, we have created a subpage on our Portland Elections page that has all of the filed finance reports organized by each report and the candidates name that can be easily clicked into. We will do this each year until either city council budgets for the large expense or we can find a more affordable solution.”

Another recommendation from the MCCE report is for Portland to allocate a stable amount of funding for the Clean Elections Fund in each year’s budget.

“This goes far beyond campaign finance, but especially in the campaign finance world, it’s just hard for every town to try to figure out their own system,” Kellar acknowledged, noting the tight city budget. That said, Kellar added, “we don’t want to replace this requirement of funding with just a ‘see what’s needed each year and put it in,’ relying on the [city] council to do that each year, because we’re trying to insulate the process from political pressure.”

While distinct from the municipal clean elections process, Kellar pointed to an example on the state-level to understand how those in power could try to alter program funding. In 2018, former Governor Paul LePage refused to sign off on campaign funds for candidates running under the state’s clean elections law, though a judge ultimately ordered him to do so. 

Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the Maine Ethics Commission, which administers Maine’s campaign finance laws, declined to comment on how the first year of the program went. 

Other expansions of clean elections stymied by governor

This past legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill to allow candidates for district attorney to also participate in the Maine Clean Elections Act. However, Gov. Janet Mills decided not to sign the proposal, or any of the bills the Legislature enacted when lawmakers reconvened for the final day of the session.

County office races have been becoming increasingly contested and are seeing greater outside spending. For example, the election for Cumberland County district attorney in 2022 saw out-of-state political action committee contributions behind flyers sent to voters to try to influence the outcome of the primary.

There has also been increased attention on county government races in light of the decision-making regarding federal infrastructure and recovery funding falling to those offices. 

While expanding clean elections to those races was unsuccessful this year, MCCE hopes to continue to push for clean election expansion long-term, including to sheriff offices as well, Kellar said. Such expansions would require more resources to be sustainable. 

In recent years, the Maine Legislature has consistently allocated $3 million for the clean elections program for state offices, and Kellar said an additional half a million could make the additions to county offices feasible. 

When it comes to expansions to other municipalities, Kellar said there is some interest in Lewiston, the state’s second largest city. The smaller the city, the smaller the city budget, therefore the harder it may be to make the case for a program. 

“There may be a lower limit, but I think we haven’t reached that lower limit yet,” Kellar said. “I think the fact that Portland was able to do it so well, on very short notice as well, should be seen as encouragement. You don’t have to be a New York City or a Seattle. It can be a small city and it can be done.”

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