Candidate: Green Independent Pat LaMarche for governor

TV ad: “I’m Voting for Pat”

Length: 30 seconds

Producer: Message Strategy Group, North Yarmouth

Market: Statewide before the June 13 primary. The ad could return later in the campaign.

Announcer: None.

Visuals: The ad opens with LaMarche and her campaign logo and transitions to a series of testimonials from Mainers who are endorsing her campaign. The spot ends as it began, with LaMarche and her campaign logo.

Text, audio: Peter Lord, college student: “Why am I supporting Pat LaMarche for governor? Because she speaks for the people of Maine, people like me.”

Amanda Slack, day-care provider: “Pat knows what a working mother goes through, and I like that.”

Phyllis Hewitt, jewelry store owner: “Pat LaMarche’s health care plan assures every Mainer has health care and it will save our business money.”

Eileen Goddard, insurance agent: “There is no one I trust more with my state and my family than Pat LaMarche”

John Demos, environmentalist: “Maine needs Pat LaMarche in Augusta.”

Sherrie Noonan, business owner: “I’m voting for Pat LaMarche”

Announcer: “Pat LaMarche, for change, for Maine, for governor.”

Purpose: The ad is meant to demonstrate that LaMarche can attract support from a diverse group of voters concerned about different policy areas. LaMarche includes small business owners, a single mother and a student to show the breadth of her appeal.

Accuracy: What’s to check? Assuming the people speaking really support the candidate – and the campaign says they’re real Mainers who do – there’s not much to dispute.

LaMarche has two children and has been a single, working mother. It’s fair to say, as Amanda Slack does, that she knows what that’s like.

The ad says that LaMarche has a health care plan that will cover everyone in the state and save businesses money, but it doesn’t have any details about the plan or how it would work.

In her keynote address at the Green Independent Party convention in May, LaMarche outlined the advantages of the universal health care systems that serve other modern, industrialized countries, citing lower costs and better health outcomes.

LaMarche said: “And while we in the U.S. have a higher infant mortality rate, higher diabetes rates, and greater risk of heart disease and stroke than 23 other modern industrialized countries, still most folks die old and it costs quite a bit to have a dignified and hopefully pain-free passing.”

“By the way, the other 23 countries differ from us in one other way. They have a universal health care system. Mainers spent $7.7 billion last year on health care and the related insurances. That’s nearly a quarter of our state domestic product. And nearly double the percentage that those 23 other countries pay.”

Our view: The advertisement makes the case that it’s alright to vote for a third-party candidate. Despite LaMarche’s state and national reputation, many voters on the left of the political spectrum, especially, might still be smarting from the 2000 presidential results from Florida, where Green Independent candidate Ralph Nader arguably took enough votes from Democratic nominee Al Gore to swing the state – and the entire election – to Republican George Bush, now in his second term.

For LaMarche and the independents in the race – Barbara Merrill, John Michael, David Jones and Phillip NaPier – to have a chance, they must convince voters that they have a realistic shot at winning the whole thing and aren’t just playing a spoiler by taking votes away from Democrat John Baldacci or Republican Chandler Woodcock.

We question how Hewitt could support a health plan before the primary when the details of that plan were released just Thursday, but the ad works because it uses real Mainers saying why they support LaMarche. It has good production values and the speakers are convincing.