By Ward Peck
Editor
    A glitch that caused the agency overseeing disbursements of clean election funds to withhold $400 from a Republican candidate during the final days of the Fall 2007 election campaign has led the candidate to question the fairness of the system.
    Paul Nixon, who ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Lawrence Bliss from the House District 122 seat, recently paid back $1,762 in unused clean election funds to the state’s Commission on Governmental Ethics he was supposed to return by Dec. 19 of last year. Nixon is quoted in the Feb. 19 issue of the Portland Press Herald as saying he was not going to repay the money owed “until the last minute,” as a protest for never receiving an additional $398.68 he was entitled to, nor any explanation why he did not receive the disbursement. Nixon repaid the state the unspent $1,762 just before a Feb. 27 meeting of the election commission held to consider the matter.
    “The ethics commission violated their own rules,” Nixon said. “What about that? It’s not fair. Clean elections are not clean.”
    Nixon lost the three-way race by a substantial margin. Bliss received 2,477 votes (61 percent), Nixon received 1,095 votes (27 percent) and Green Independent candidate William Laidley received 501 votes (12 percent), according to results compiled by the Secretary of State’s office.
    On Oct. 26, 12 days before the election, the commission authorized Nixon to spend $219.98 in matching funds.
    Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the ethics commission acknowledged human error had caused the deletion a payment vouchers and a letter to Nixon informing him of the money.
    Wayne said an employee at the commission making a standard follow-up call tried to alert Nixon by telephone about the money but could not reach either Nixon or a message recorder.
    Nixon claims no such attempt was made but Wayne is confident such calls were made.
    In a letter dated Feb. 26, Wayne informed Nixon that the two other candidates whose payment letters were deleted found out about the error through such phone calls.
    “We believe that we were in contact with them shortly afterward so that they found out quickly that they could spend their personal funds and later be reimbursed with matching funds,” Wayne wrote. “You were the only candidate who ultimately did not receive his payment of matching funds.”
    In the letter, Wayne also wrote that on Oct. 29, three days after the $219.98 authorization letter was deleted, Nixon was authorized to spend another $178.70.
    “...we wrote you an October 29 letter notifying you of your second matching funds authorization ($178.70) and that your total matching funds authorization was $398.68.”
    The second authorization was also followed up with a phone call, according to Wayne’s letter.
    Wayne said Nixon had never made any compliant about the process prior to being questioned by the Press Herald reporter, including conversations with commission staff members about returning the unspent money.
    In the letter to Nixon, Wayne wrote, “While the error should not have happened, we note that you chose not to spend $1,762 of your June 2006 payment, so we are hopeful that you were not disadvantaged in your election.”
    However, Nixon claims he would have altered his advertising strategy had he known about the additional money. 
    Nixon said he plans to run for the seat again in 2008.