By Ward Peck

Editor

    A glitch that caused the agency overseeing
disbursements of clean election funds to withhold $400 from a
Republican candidate during the final days of the Fall 2007 election
campaign has led the candidate to question the fairness of the system.

    Paul Nixon, who ran an unsuccessful campaign to
unseat Lawrence Bliss from the House District 122 seat, recently paid
back $1,762 in unused clean election funds to the state’s Commission on
Governmental Ethics he was supposed to return by Dec. 19 of last year.
Nixon is quoted in the Feb. 19 issue of the Portland Press Herald as
saying he was not going to repay the money owed “until the last
minute,” as a protest for never receiving an additional $398.68 he was
entitled to, nor any explanation why he did not receive the
disbursement. Nixon repaid the state the unspent $1,762 just before a
Feb. 27 meeting of the election commission held to consider the matter.

    “The ethics commission violated their own rules,”
Nixon said. “What about that? It’s not fair. Clean elections are not
clean.”

    Nixon lost the three-way race by a substantial
margin. Bliss received 2,477 votes (61 percent), Nixon received 1,095
votes (27 percent) and Green Independent candidate William Laidley
received 501 votes (12 percent), according to results compiled by the
Secretary of State’s office.

    On Oct. 26, 12 days before the election, the commission authorized Nixon to spend $219.98 in matching funds.

    Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the ethics
commission acknowledged human error had caused the deletion a payment
vouchers and a letter to Nixon informing him of the money.

    Wayne said an employee at the commission making a
standard follow-up call tried to alert Nixon by telephone about the
money but could not reach either Nixon or a message recorder.

    Nixon claims no such attempt was made but Wayne is confident such calls were made.

    In a letter dated Feb. 26, Wayne informed Nixon that
the two other candidates whose payment letters were deleted found out
about the error through such phone calls.

    “We believe that we were in contact with them
shortly afterward so that they found out quickly that they could spend
their personal funds and later be reimbursed with matching funds,”
Wayne wrote. “You were the only candidate who ultimately did not
receive his payment of matching funds.”

    In the letter, Wayne also wrote that on Oct. 29,
three days after the $219.98 authorization letter was deleted, Nixon
was authorized to spend another $178.70.

    “...we wrote you an October 29 letter notifying you
of your second matching funds authorization ($178.70) and that your
total matching funds authorization was $398.68.”

    The second authorization was also followed up with a phone call, according to Wayne’s letter.

    Wayne said Nixon had never made any compliant about
the process prior to being questioned by the Press Herald reporter,
including conversations with commission staff members about returning
the unspent money.

    In the letter to Nixon, Wayne wrote, “While the
error should not have happened, we note that you chose not to spend
$1,762 of your June 2006 payment, so we are hopeful that you were not
disadvantaged in your election.”

    However, Nixon claims he would have altered his
advertising strategy had he known about the additional money. 

    Nixon said he plans to run for the seat again in 2008.