State Rep. Barbara Merrill of Appleton is considering dumping the Democratic Party and running as an independent against Gov. John Baldacci. More troubling for the governor, however, should be Merrill’s assertion that she’s being courted “heavily” by other Democrats who say they are fed up with Baldacci’s irresponsible fiscal policies and listless leadership.

Merrill said she’d make a decision by mid-January.

“John Baldacci is hugely unpopular,” Merrill said Thursday while driving to The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor for a tour and visit. “What I’m hearing from people is that regardless of who you are, a Democrat or a Republican, when (independent) Angus King was governor, the majority of the state of Maine had confidence in state government.

“They don’t have confidence today,” she said.

Merrill is a lifelong Democrat whose husband, Phil Merrill, is a longtime stalwart of the Maine party who ran against GOP superstar Bill Cohen in 1996 and managed to end the fight on his feet.

She is a lawyer who had spent 15 years lobbying the Maine Legislature on behalf of nonprofits and for-profits alike before being elected to the House last year. She has more hands-on experience and institutional memory of Maine lawmaking in the past 10 years than the governor, who served as U.S. congressman for eight years before his carefully choreographed run for governor in 2002.

Merrill’s tumultuous first year with Democratic leadership has prompted her to write a book, hit the road and consider leaving her party to run against Baldacci.

At the rate she’s going, the party may be glad to be rid of her.

Two issues have pitted Merrill against leadership and the administration this past year – the two most important issues for Merrill personally: the state budget and the cleanup of the Androscoggin River.

“I think the party has gone far away from its roots,” she said. “The Democratic leadership is closed to new ideas; so hostile, really, to new ideas. I am still very dismayed and discouraged because it has gone to an extreme level: The Democratic Party sold the Androscoggin down the river and they stand as the party of fiscal irresponsibility.”

Most breathtaking to Merrill was Baldacci’s plan to borrow nearly a half-billion dollars to balance the state’s current two-year budget after failing to get lawmakers’ OK to sell off the state lottery.

She describes the Baldacci administration as “unprecedented in its fiscal irresponsibility,” including its persistent aversion to an honestly balanced state budget.

“It was so over the top, so fiscally irresponsible, it was stunning,” she said of the borrowing scheme that Baldacci aborted only under threat of a people’s veto by Republicans.

But Merrill became totally disenchanted last September when the Democratic office sent around a proposed newsletter that lawmakers would eventually mail to their constituents as an end-of-session report on what the Legislature accomplished.

Legislators could choose from a menu of about a dozen topics and focus their newsletters to their own interests and districts. When Merrill got the draft newsletter and saw that leadership had not mentioned either the serious budget problems or the fact that the Androscoggin River bill would not clean up the river, she decided to write her own newsletter.

But she was told by leadership to send her version to the Democratic office for approval since the newsletter was a special bulletin paid for by the majority Democrats and not individual legislators.

Two months after submitting her newsletter, she was finally told it would have to be cleaned up. Specifically, Merrill could not tell her constituents that the state budget had resulted in the state’s bond rating being lowered; or that leadership had killed a bill she sponsored – and which the Legislature passed on a first vote – that would have required two-thirds approval of the House and Senate in order for the state to borrow money.

“It seems that Democratic leadership, having failed in their efforts to get me to vote against my conscience and my constituents, have now turned their attention to preventing me from communicating my views to the people I serve,” Merrill wrote in a Nov. 8 e-mail to her party’s leadership.

Merrill ended up not sending out an end-of-session newsletter. She said she didn’t want taxpayers to pay for the propaganda.

Instead, Merrill is now communicating directly with voters and seriously considering taking on Baldacci. The governor, through a spokesman, said recently he welcomes a “thoughtful, productive debate” in the new year and that he’s confident of his message and record.