By David Farmer,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Clock management.

In professional sports, championships have been won and lost by a team’s ability to manage the last few moments of an important game.

For one gubernatorial candidate, poor time management could cost him $1.2 million in public money to finance his campaign.

Former state Rep. John Michael of Auburn was less than a minute late filing necessary paperwork with the state’s ethics commission, showing up at the office in Augusta just after 5 p.m. Friday.

Michael is trying to become the fourth candidate in this fall’s race for governor to qualify for public funding through the Maine Clean Election Act.

To qualify, candidates for governor had to submit at least 2,500 $5 contributions to the Clean Election Fund. Each contribution must come from a registered voter and be verified by the town clerk where the person appears on the voter rolls.

The deadline for qualifying contributions was June 2, but candidates had 10 additional business days to turn in the documentation from the town clerks. The second deadline was June 16.

Michael was late – if by less than a minute.

According to Jonathan Wayne, the executive director of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, the missed deadline could disqualify Michael from receiving public funding.

“We’re completing our routine review of the qualifying contributions now,” Wayne said.

The late paperwork is just one of the factors that will be considered by staff, he said.

While Michael submitted more than the required 2,500 $5 contributions, Wayne said, the commission staff is still verifying the contributions. That review process will take at least a week.

The staff will then make a decision to certify Michael as a MCEA candidate or to decline to certify him, Wayne said.

“Either decision by staff is appealable to commissioners,” Wayne said, leaving the ultimate decision on whether Michael qualifies for public funding to the appointed members of the commission, not to Wayne or his staff.

Reached at his campaign headquarters Monday, Michael said he was confident that he would be certified and even contested being late.

“I don’t think we were late,” Michael said, “maybe on bureaucratic time, but not by my watch.”

“I don’t think it will be any big deal,” Michael continued. “I think they’ll determine that we collected more than the necessary 2,500 contributions before the June 2 deadline.”

Michael attributed the last-minute appearance to the difficulties of wrangling voter verification from town clerks spread around the state.

“When you’re dealing with volunteers and not getting (the forms) back from these town clerks, it can be a difficult process,” Michael said.

The ethics commission will convene Thursday for its regularly scheduled monthly meeting. Michael could appear before the commission then, Wayne said, but the staff won’t be prepared to make its recommendation until after it completes the final review of Michael’s qualifying contributions.

“The public is always welcome and candidates are always welcome at commission meetings,” Wayne said. “But at this point, there won’t be anything to appeal.”

Publicly funded gubernatorial candidates are eligible for $400,000 in clean election funding and can qualify for matching money if a privately funded candidate raises or spends more than that, up to $1.2 million for this year’s race.

Republican Chandler Woodcock, Green Independent Pat LaMarche and independent Barbara Merrill have qualified for public financing. Incumbent Gov. John Baldacci and independents Phillip NaPier and David Jones are raising money for their campaign from private donors.

As the end of the day approached Friday, Wayne said his staff started to pay particular attention to the time.

“We expected Mr. Michael to come in on time with $1.2 million at stake,” Wayne said. “When it got closer to 5 , we got alarmed that he might not make it on time.”

Wayne said that his staff went online to determine the official time for the United States just in case it was that close. In the end, the automated doors of the government building also played a role.

Like other government buildings, the ethics commission’s outside doors lock automatically at 5 p.m. “When Mr. Michael started walking up, we had to let him in,” Wayne said.

He said he was checking with the building’s security office to determine exactly how the time for the doors is set.

“From the staff point of view, it’s an issue of being fair to Mr. Michael and being fair to the other candidates who went about it the right way.”

If Michael doesn’t qualify for public financing, it’s not clear what happens to the thousands of $5 contributions to the clean election fund he collected.

According to Wayne, a candidate for governor hasn’t gotten this close to qualifying and not made it. In a few legislative races, the candidate never turned in the contributions collected.

It’s possible that the checks still could be considered as contributions to the clean election fund, or could be returned to the contributors. There’s nothing in the law, Wayne said, that dictates what happens.

Like Michael’s clean elections fate, the final destination for the checks if he doesn’t qualify will be made by the commission, Wayne said.