Alan Caron’s op-ed piece, “Negative campaign advertising is poisoning our democracy” (Oct. 24) offers two points intended to be helpful to readers regarding changes “needed to be made” to Maine’s Clean Election Act and secondly, respecting negative campaign advertising, “We need to fix our elections before they drown us in a sea of hatred, arrogance and murky sludge.”

With regard to the Clean Election Law, Caron suggests Clean Election funding to candidates be reduced “the same amount that is spent by so-called ‘independent’ groups to help them.” He concludes, “When there’s nothing to gain from independent spending, candidates will find a way to stop it.” Caron adds it “won’t be easy to implement.” Yup, it certainly won’t; the United States Supreme Court didn’t stop it.

Assuming Caron’s idea realized enactment, it’s potentially ruinous to “clean candidates” spending, given the substantial sums of independent moneys pouring into Maine. Clean election candidates could find their taxpayer moneys wiped out or nearly so. And what to do when candidates have spent their taxpayer sums before independent money has been spent for them thereby requiring return of a like amount of taxpayer money? Caron’s drawing board has some “not holes.”

With regard to Caron’s contention of need to be rid of “hatred, arrogance and murky sludge in our elections,” he ostensibly illustrates an example of campaign poison in the last paragraph of his article where he labeled Gov. Paul LePage as, “the most shockingly underprepared governor in our lifetimes.”

Giving Caron the benefit of the doubt, and using his three categories of negative advertising, his potshot doesn’t amount to more than “murky sludge.”

John W. Benoit

Manchester

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