The $500 limit | That's the most companies can donate to a gubernatorial candidate, but there are other ways to get involved in this year's election

Many at Cianbro Corp. were enthusiastic about Peter Cianchette's 2002 run for governor. Too enthusiastic, as it turned out. The construction company and its employees were so anxious to help that they blew past Maine's limit on campaign expenditures.

State law limits gubernatorial campaign contributions to $500 per company per election, either in cash or donated time and work. But Cianbro employees, the company recently admitted, ultimately gave a whopping $68,609 to the Cianchette campaign in the form of materials and labor mostly used to make and distribute campaign signs. Alan Burton, Cianbro's vice president of human resources, concedes the company was "overzealous" in its support for Cianchette. "People got excited and got involved," Burton says. "We had no intention of wrongdoing."

In most respects, the situation that led to Cianbro's violation is unique. Few companies and candidates enjoy as close a relationship as Cianchette and Cianbro. The Republican's father, Bud Cianchette, and three uncles founded the company. Peter Cianchette remains a favorite son of Pittsfield, a Somerset County town where Cianbro's headquarters dominate the small downtown and children bike and play on Cianchette Avenue.

Still, Cianbro's mistakes serve as a warning to other Maine companies and businesses looking to be politically involved. As Burton notes, Maine's campaign rules aren't "something that people look at every day. If it's not a common concern of your business, you're not looking at them."

So as Maine approaches another election season ˆ— one in which the race for governor is expected to be heated and control of the Legislature hangs in the balance ˆ— what exactly are the rules governing business participation in political campaigns? What can a company hoping to exert political influence legally do? And when Maine's businesses do choose to get involved in campaigns, what do they find is the best way to do so?

While Maine's limits for direct contributions to campaigns are the strictest in the nation, as Cianbro learned, there are other avenues for businesses looking to make an impact. Each of those avenues, however, comes with potential pitfalls for companies that don't take the time to understand the rules. "I hope that businesses won't be deterred from contributing," says Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, the state agency charged with enforcing election rules. "The commission does not want to see election law become a deterrent to businesses being involved in public affairs."

The cash donation cap
Maine's most important campaign finance law is pretty straightforward: Companies, like individuals, may only donate $500 to a gubernatorial candidate per election, and $250 per election to candidates for legislative offices. Companies have two chances to give the maximum. "The primary election is considered to be different than the general election," Wayne says.

That essentially means the total a company can give to a major-party gubernatorial candidate such as Cianchette or Gov. John Baldacci is $1,000. Even political parties and political action committees can give no more than that to gubernatorial campaigns, and the limit applies as much to in-kind contributions such as labor and materials as it does to cold, hard cash.

If you own two companies, however, that doesn't mean you can donate twice. Election law treats distinct companies that share an owner, a parent company, or two or more officers or directors as a single entity ˆ— so those companies can only give a combined donation of $500 per gubernatorial election.

The distinction surprised some business owners and became an issue during the 2002 campaign, when a pre-election investigation by the Portland Press Herald found that several supporters to the Cianchette campaign had given too much by contributing as separate companies. The newspaper found, for example, that Pape Management Co., Pape Chevrolet Inc. and Pape Auto Motion Inc., all based in Portland, shared ownership but made separate donations to the campaign, exceeding the lawful limit.

Roy Lenardson, Cianchette's 2002 campaign manager, says it was a mistake made by the campaign, which he says had believed such contributions were okay so long as they came from separate companies. "It was a fairly obscure rule," he says. "Once we were aware of it, we just gave the money back."

Baldacci's campaign ran into similar trouble in 2001, when the ethics commission found that some businesses had twice made $500 contributions to the Bangor politician's pre-primary election effort. For example, Quirk Subaru and Quirk Auto Park each gave $500 donations, earning the Baldacci campaign a rebuke from the ethics commission. This time around, the campaign intends to avoid the mistake: "It's an issue we're paying very close attention to," says Jesse Connelly, campaign manager for Baldacci. "When businesses run into that situation, through no fault of their own, we return the check."

A viable candidate for governor in Maine typically raises at least $1 million by the end of the campaign, so Maine's limits on corporate and individual giving mean the amount given by a business will amount to little more than a drop in the gubernatorial election budget. Further blunting the impact is the growing popularity of Maine's public financing program, which limits private contributions to candidates who choose public financing to five dollars. Two of the four major candidates ˆ— Republicans Peter Mills of Cornville and Chandler Woodcock of Farmington ˆ— have qualified for public campaign financing. Baldacci and Republican David Emery will finance their campaigns with private money and filed initial campaign finance reports in January.

Dulling the impact of big donors might be what voters intended when they passed the so-called Clean Election Law in 1996, after a citizen referendum put the measure on the ballot. Besides providing taxpayer-funded elections, the law reduced per-election gubernatorial contributions from political action committees from $5,000 to $500, and from individuals and businesses from $1,000 to $500.

A business, however, can spend an unlimited amount on a gubernatorial or legislative campaign, so long as it does so without coordination from the campaign it is supporting. That means Cianbro's donated help to Cianchette would have been fine, under the law, had campaign officials not okayed it. Such independent expenditures, as they are called, do come with paperwork: "If a business spends more than $100, then the company would have to file a report with the ethics commission," Wayne says. "Businesses are treated under the election law the same way as any other group that wants to get involved in the election."

It's also important to remember, Wayne says, that election law does not limit the volunteer activities a company's employees make, so long as they do so for free, on their own unpaid time.

PAC and party options
Businesses face no limits on how much they give to political action committees or political parties in Maine ˆ— and a review of ethics commission filings shows that some companies give generously. The Maine Republican Party, for example, reported a $14,950 donation from Vermont-based Casella Waste Systems, owner of the Maine Energy Recovery Co. in Biddeford and a large landfill in Hampden, in 2004. Likewise, Democrats last year reported a $10,000 donation from Georgia-Pacific Corp., an Atlanta-based company that recently decided to shutter its mill in Old Town.

In fact, the vast majority of businesses don't give directly to candidates. "There isn't a huge amount of business money that flows into candidate campaigns," Lenardson says. "Most businesses prefer to put their money in PACs."

PACs allow companies to pool money, focus on the issues important to their industry and affect a wider range of statewide races. Indeed, the ethics commission's list of registered committees includes a wide range of business interests, from a Central Maine Power PAC to the Maine Association of Realtors PAC to the Retail Lumber Dealers Association of Maine PAC.

In 2002, about a dozen Rockland-area businesses banded together to found a political action committee they called Concerned Businesses for Midcoast Maine, a non-partisan group dedicated to electing candidates that members considered business-friendly. Martha Johnston-Nash, the group's treasurer and owner of Crowing Touch Embroidery in Union, says the PAC initially was concerned with workers' compensation legislation, but broadened its focus over time. "We were a mix of Democrats and Republicans," she says. "We tried best as we could to look at who was voting for what policies."

The group targeted several legislators it didn't favor, then placed advertisements on radio expressing its views. Johnston-Nash says the tactic was effective ˆ— most of the candidates supported by the PAC, such as Rep. Stephen Bowen, a Republican from Rockport, ultimately won ˆ— and recommends it for other businesses. "There are a limited number of ways that businesses can get together," she says. "It's a reasonable way to have some influence on the political scene."

Concerned Businesses for Midcoast Maine had less influence in the 2004 election, as interest among its business owners petered out. This year, the PAC filed paperwork to terminate its existence. Most members, Johnston-Nash says, don't have the time to devote to politics. "It's one of the biggest issues for businesses in Maine," she adds. "You don't have time to work on these things because you've got to be at your businesses. But the issues are so critical to our survival."

Volunteering and beyond
There are other ways that businesses can contribute to elections. Wayne notes, for example, that businesses are free to donate office space, including its equipment and telephones ˆ— none of which are considered campaign contributions under Maine law, so long as the donation does not mean additional costs to the business. "Some campaigns need to do a phone bank," Wayne says. "A business could help out with that."

Wayne says businesses also are free to distribute voter information guides that recommend a vote for a particular candidate or point of view. They are, however, required to declare partisan guides as independent expenditures.

Such voters guides are not always popular. The House Democratic Campaign Committee in 2004 complained about ratings by the Maine Economic Research Institute distributed by First Citizen's Bank in Caribou. The Democrats, in their complaint to the ethics commission, said the bank was "printing and distributing campaign literature to influence an election within the 21-day period without reporting the independent expenditure."

At issue was whether or not the MERI information was partisan, or simply educational. The Maine Bankers Association, arguing on behalf of the bank, insisted the ratings were simply instructive. The Democrats, says Mark Walker, the association's president "thought there was some impropriety" but "their complaint was meritless." The party ultimately dropped its complaint.

Former state Sen. Neria Douglass, a Democrat in 2004 involved in a tight race for her seat representing Auburn, Poland and Durham, also complained that year to the ethics commission about the MERI guide, which she says was distributed in her district by Tambrands Inc., an Auburn-based tampon manufacturer. "Every Republican in the thing has a gold star, and every Democrat has a red mark," says Douglas, who was defeated in 2004. "I thought it was a campaign expenditure on behalf of my opponent, but the ethics commission said it wasn't."

Indeed, Wayne says it's unusual for the ethics commission to impose penalties against a business, preferring to advise rather than punish. Yet depending on whether the commission finds that Cianbro's expenses were made independent of the Cianchette campaign, the company could face a penalty of $5,000 for every late expenditure report.
The Cianchette campaign, which recently filed amended campaign finance reports that detail the company's help, faces fines of up to $10,000 for failing to initially report the assistance.

Still, despite what has been an unpleasant experience for Cianbro, Burton, the vice president of human resources, says the company will not pull back from politics as a result. Cianbro, he says, plans to write campaign guidelines that it will distribute to employees, and will encourage its workers to remain engaged. "There's nothing wrong with people getting involved," Burton says, "as long as we do it within the established guidelines."