AUGUSTA – The bill for this year’s gubernatorial election is in.

Taxpayers paid about $3.3 million for the campaigns of the three publicly funded candidates who qualified under the Maine Clean Election Act.

According to campaign finance disclosures filed Tuesday to the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, Republican nominee Chandler Woodcock spent about $1.3 million on his campaign. Green Independent Pat LaMarche spent $1.1 million, and independent Barbara Merrill spent $900,000.

While the four were well-financed, they failed to unseat Democratic incumbent John Baldacci, who ran as a privately financed candidate. Baldacci spent about $600,000 on his general election campaign and about $1.3 million during the year.

Baldacci won with a plurality of the vote, receiving 38 percent, to 30 percent for Woodcock, 22 percent for Merrill and 10 percent for LaMarche. Little-known independent candidate Phillip Morris NaPier received less than 1 percent of the vote.

Maine Clean Election Act candidates received an initial distribution of $400,000 for the general election. Each candidate then received matching money when outside groups spent money trying to influence the election with independent expenditures.

Baldacci and Woodcock benefited from and were targeted by spending from third-party groups. More than $500,000 of expenditures on the race by the Maine Democratic Party, for example, triggered matching money for the three publicly financed candidates.

The high cost of the election and the multiple candidates who qualified for public financing have led some members of the state’s ethics commission, which administers the Maine Clean Election Act, and the Legislature to question whether the standards to qualify for funding are too lax.

To qualify, candidates had to collect 2,500 $5 contributions to the Maine Clean Election Fund. The ethics commission staff has recommended increasing the number to 3,000 and requiring that at least 50 contributions come from each county. The staff has also proposed requiring each gubernatorial candidate to raise $10,000 in seed money to qualify for public financing.

In addition to the three general election candidates for governor, state Sen. Peter Mills, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, also received $200,000 to fund his primary campaign.

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