By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – Members of the Maine Ethics Commission appeared to be stunned at the conclusion of Wednesday’s bizarre testimony regarding two Clean Election campaigns last year.

“What do we do now?” asked Chairman Jean Ginn Marvin after the day’s fourth and last subpoenaed witness, Jessica Larlee of Minot, left the room.

The campaign oversight panel conducted the fact-finding investigative hearing to determine if taxpayer money received by candidates Julia St. James of 37 Mountain View Drive in Hartford and Sarah Trundy of 136 East Oxford Road in Minot was spent for campaign-related purposes.

St. James ran unsuccessfully in the Fourth Branch Party for western Maine’s District 14 Senate seat; Trundy lost her bid for the House 96 seat as a Green Party candidate.

Commissioners also sought to learn the accuracy of campaign finance reports and literature, and the origin of a bogus postcard meant to smear a candidate in a 2004 House election in Biddeford.

Testimony covered this and much more.

“My expectations were exceeded today for fact-finding,” Commissioner Michael Bigos of Auburn said afterward.

Swearing in the first witness, Marvin asked St. James to raise her right hand and swear to tell the truth under God.

“I swear it will be the truth, but do not swear under God,” St. James said.

She then produced a doctor’s note from Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, which, St. James claimed, excused her from testifying.

St. James said she had fallen that morning and cracked a rib. Marvin asked if she was on medication that could affect her testimony. St. James said she was, but that it wouldn’t affect “me telling the truth.”

According to commission records, St. James received $50,373 in Clean Election funds, returned about $13,752, but failed to submit invoices or receipts showing how most of the $36,000 balance was spent.

Her campaign manager, Daniel Rogers of Auburn, received $11,072 in Clean Election funds, but no invoices or receipts were submitted for this work, records state.

St. James said that work included consulting, one of three promised newsletters, and automated telephone calls that she didn’t think were made.

Jonathan Wayne, the commission’s executive director, questioned St. James about one noteworthy expenditure: the purchase of $8,066 in postage stamps from post offices in Auburn and Lewiston in the last days of the campaign for newsletters that St. James said were “virtually worthless.”

St. James proudly said she was told it was the largest-ever such purchase in Auburn and Lewiston history.

“We went from one post office to another. We had great difficulty to get the postage,” she said.

“Of that, what was used?” Wayne asked.

“You would know that better than me,” St. James responded.

With an incredulous look, Wayne then told her that she had told him in one interview she had used $992 worth of stamps, but that number changed to $3,586 in a second interview.

“I wasn’t aware it had an amount,” St. James said.

“How is it you couldn’t know that?” Wayne asked.

“There’s a lot of things I don’t know,” was her response.

“By the time the election happened, I was running on sheer nerves. I didn’t pay attention to it. It’s not something I would pay attention to,” St. James said.

In response to an audit, St. James returned $4,578 in unused stamps to the commission. The panel believed it could sell all but $782 of the stamps back to the post offices.

St. James also admitted to having an aversion to paperwork, which is why she initially hired Larlee of 307 Center Minot Hill Road, Rogers’ then girlfriend, as her treasurer.

When asked by Wayne why she fired Larlee a few months after hiring her, St. James said Larlee “got stranger as the campaign continued.”

“Her hair she put in dreadlocks; she was doing a lot of drugs and picking up a lot of men. One weekend,” she said, “she was really cranked up on methadone” and left nasty messages on her answering machine, St. James said.

Larlee, her hair in dreadlocks, admitted to having taken drugs and being “kind of irrational,” and leaving the messages.

Larlee said she resigned as treasurer when St. James “became extremely catty.”

“Every boy I brought up there, she hit on. Toward the end of the campaign, I was disgusted,” she said.

Larlee also raised the eyebrows of commissioners when she claimed that St. James had rented a storefront building on Main Street in Wilton with Clean Election money, intending to open a flower shop.

Earlier, under questioning by commissioners, St. James said the building was used as a campaign headquarters, and the money was used to pay the rent.

She denied ever using the money for personal gain.

“You can call me a weed farmer, but you can’t call me a thief,” St. James said.

In campaign literature she listed her occupation as owner of a small commercial greenhouse at her home. In December 2004, she pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of marijuana cultivation and was given a six-month suspended sentence.

The commission recessed the hearing until Nov. 9.