AUGUSTA – Presidential campaign activity is slowly picking up in Maine with early choices dividing friends, colleagues and households.

“We have a split family,” laughs Hillary Clinton-backing Elizabeth Mitchell of Vassalboro, the Democratic leader of the state Senate, on the way to lunch with a Barack Obama-supporting son.

Democratic Gov. John Baldacci, officially uncommitted thus far but widely believed to be leaning toward Mrs. Clinton, knows what that’s like. One sister, for instance, is gung-ho for Obama.

(Baldacci’s standard response about his preference is that it’s too early. Last week, on a radio talk show, he had nice things to say about Republican Rudy Giuliani.)

On the GOP side, Maine’s delegates to the National Republican Committee have lined up in different camps.

According to state party Chairman Mark Ellis, National Committeeman Peter Cianchette of South Portland – the 2002 gubernatorial candidate – has thrown in with Mitt Romney while National Committeewoman Karen Raye of Perry is siding with Guiliani.

That puts them at odds, at least in a letterhead sort of way, with Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, former Gov. John McKernan, who is married to Snowe, and state House Republican floor leader Josh Tardy of Newport, who endorsed John McCain in January.

“The Ron Paul people seem to be strongly organized, too, at the grass roots level,” Ellis says.

Some candidates can hope to build on residual support from past efforts in Maine.

Democrats John Edwards, whose backers include state Senate President Beth Edmonds of Freeport, and Dennis Kucinich, a darling of liberal activists last time around who spoke to the crowd at an August anti-war demonstration in Kennebunkport, are in that group.

For Republicans, heading into the final year of President Bush’s second term, this election campaign offers more of a fresh start for all.

With continuing pressure in some states to accelerate their voting to select delegates, Maine’s schedule for party caucuses – spread out between Feb. 1-3 for Republicans and relatively late on Feb. 10 for Democrats – gives the large fields of candidates on both sides small reason to focus here.

Asked to assess the level of presidential campaign activity in Maine to this point, Ellis calls it “still pretty light.”

Echoes Republican activist Dan Billings: “I have not observed any organized effort to build support in Maine or build an organization in Maine. With so many big states moving up in the process, winning the Maine caucuses is not going to have any impact.”

Democratic Party spokeswoman Carol Andrews doesn’t disagree but says Maine still offers fertile ground for candidates prospecting for cash and looking to recruit campaign help.

“They’re all raising money everywhere, in every state where they have potential including Maine,” Andrews says. An additional draw, she adds, is “a lot of political talent in Maine.”

In many ways, the presidential campaign is being overshadowed in Maine by spirited sparring between supporters of Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who is seeking a third term next year, and sixth-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, who is challenging her.

Allen’s run for the Senate has touched off an energetic race, particularly on the Democratic side, to succeed him.

Looking to drum up some presidential campaign excitement, then-Chairman Ben Dudley of the state Democratic Party in June floated the idea of a Maine straw poll. Nothing came of it.

But even without such a lure, it appears the time has come for more in-state, in-person schmoozing by candidates and surrogates.

On Friday, Elizabeth Edwards swung through the Portland area to say her husband, the former North Carolina senator and vice presidential nominee, is passionate about building a society where everyone has a chance to succeed.

She said that while Edwards has trailed fellow Democrats Hillary Clinton and Obama in national polls, he has been polling well in states that are among the first to hold their primaries and caucuses.

This week, two presidential hopefuls – one Republican, one Democrat – are coming to Maine for campaign and fundraising events.

On Monday, Giuliani, the Republican former mayor of New York City, will speak at the National Troopers Coalition fall conference and then attend a benefit luncheon at the Sheraton Hotel in South Portland.

Obama, the Democratic U.S. senator from Illinois, will arrive on Tuesday for a rally at the Portland Expo in the afternoon and a fundraiser at a private home that night.

In 2004, when President Bush was not challenged for renomination, eventual Democratic nominee John Kerry, the senator from Massachusetts, won the Maine caucuses, finishing ahead of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, Kucinich and Edwards.

Kerry took Maine in the fall.

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