AUGUSTA (AP)- Gov. John Baldacci shrugged off the showing of his little-known challenger in last week’s Democratic gubernatorial primary election.

One in four Democratic voters cast their ballots for computer specialist Christopher Miller of Gray rather than for Baldacci, a veteran of 3 years in the Blaine House, eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives and 12 years in the state Senate who has raised more than half a million dollars for his re-election campaign.

Baldacci said the lopsided primary contest had been a good tune-up and suggested he was satisfied. He recalled that Maine’s last Democratic governor, Joseph Brennan, had faced primary opposition the year he won a second term.

“The governor’s making decisions every day,” Baldacci said. Balancing a budget, for instance, can have unpopular impacts, he said.

“You’re not going to please everybody in this job, but you have to make the right decisions for the people of Maine,” Baldacci added.

The Brennan experience in 1982 may not be on point.

Instead of facing a political unknown, Brennan was challenged by a legislator with 12 years of experience in the state House of Representatives – Georgette Berube of Lewiston.

Strapped for cash, Berube mounted an uneven campaign. In the end, Brennan beat her by better than 3-1 – the voting was 56,990 to 17,219.

Brennan went on to defeat Republican nominee Charles Cragin soundly, outpolling him by more than 100,000 votes – 281,066 to 172,949.

Baldacci, saying his primary challenge allowed him to get out of the State House to “start reconnecting with people,” now confronts Republican nominee Chandler Woodcock, a state senator from Farmington often cast as the most conservative candidate in the three-way GOP field that included former U.S. Rep. David Emery and state Sen. Peter Mills.

But unlike Brennan, Baldacci will not have basically a one-on-one battle.

Green Independent Pat LaMarche, along with independents John Michael of Auburn, state Rep. Barbara Merrill of Appleton, David John Jones of Falmouth and Phillip Morris NaPier of Windham, have also qualified for the Nov. 7 ballot.

LaMarche ran for governor in 1998 on the Green Independent ticket and won 7 percent of the vote. Four years ago, Michael received 2 percent of the general election vote as Baldacci won his first term as governor.

Merrill, who with Woodcock and LaMarche are already eligible for public campaign financing, earned attention in recent months by authoring a book – “Setting the Maine Course” – that inveighs against political orthodoxies.

Now that the primaries are over, those Clean Elections candidates – Michael’s status was pending Friday – are getting $400,000 to mount their general election campaigns.

Woodcock, who in unofficial returns took 39 percent of the GOP vote while Mills had 35 percent and Emery had 26 percent, rejects labels generally. But he eagerly self-brands himself in one area as a supporter of the spending cap initiative known as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights that will be decided by referendum by the same people picking a governor.

“That’s a fact,” he said.

Woodcock said his plurality-only primary election victory was no indication of weakness, but merely a result of a race that featured three attractive entrants. For him, the win was a win.

“I don’t think it makes any difference. … It was a very hotly contested primary from the start,” he said.

LaMarche, meanwhile, said the results from Tuesday’s voting offer “a huge opportunity for us.”

She said the Green message will remain solution-oriented, but that it could be refined after “a wonderful opportunity to hear great ideas” from candidates eliminated by the party primaries – Emery, Mills and Miller.

LaMarche made clear that she didn’t agree with them all. She also said she believed the vote that did not go for Baldacci in the Democratic primary “shows how vulnerable he is, even in his own party,” and that the Republican primary demonstrated limits on Woodcock’s appeal.

“I don’t think that his constituency’s going to be a lot larger than that,” she said.

A top adviser to Maine’s last two-term governor says the Democratic primary results were surprising, but probably of only passing interest.

“It was clearly a protest vote,” Dennis Bailey, who worked for independent Gov. Angus King, said of the Miller inroads against Baldacci. “But that being said, it won’t matter in the end.”

Bailey surmises that Woodcock’s conservatism will work in Baldacci’s favor.

“He’s not going to have any trouble holding onto his base against Woodcock,” Bailey said.

Still, a crowded field fueled by public financing leaves lots of room for speculation.

“If some of them start to take off, they’re going to have some pretty serious money behind them,” Bailey says.

AP-ES-06-18-06 1018EDT