AUGUSTA (AP) – A self-employed carpenter who only last month switched his voter registration from independent to Democrat is now looking to get his name atop the party’s election ballot in 2006.

Robert Bizier, 45, of Albion, who is making his first bid for public office, has become the only Democrat to challenge Gov. John Baldacci in the primary next June.

Bizier said his candidacy was prompted primarily by his opposition to the Dirigo Health program that Baldacci pushed through the Legislature. He said supporters of the program designed to extend coverage to the state’s uninsured “keep trying to pass this off as the greatest thing to come down the line, (but) eventually it will bankrupt the state.”

Patrick Colwell, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said he knows nothing about Bizier.

“It’s a free country and everything, but certainly if someone was serious about running as a Democrat, they would talk to the chair of the Maine Democratic Party and to the chair of his local party,” which Bizier has not done, Colwell said.

Bizier is the 10th candidate, but the only Democrat other than Baldacci, to file as a gubernatorial candidate with the state Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.

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