While there might not be anything illegal about former gubernatorial candidate Barbara Merrill paying her husband $109,000 of public money to act as a political consultant to her campaign last fall, there should be.
Merrill’s payment to her husband, Phil, a veteran political consultant, came out after an audit of her campaign spending. Merrill received more than $915,000 in public money under the state’s Clean Election Act.
The way she used a large portion of that money, however, makes a mockery of the very law that benefited her campaign.
Merrill paid $211,000 to Mountain Top Productions to produce and purchase advertising for the campaign. More than half of that money went to her husband, who formed the company, with the rest going to media outlets.
The Merrills, who are both attorneys, no doubt knew what they were doing was legal. In fact, Phil Merrill appeared before the Ethics Commission and argued just that, saying the commission had tried and failed to get the law changed to bar candidates from paying clean election money to family members.
“That’s about as clear an indication as a lawyer can have,” he said.
While the Merrills might have been clear about what the law allowed them to do, Barbara Merrill wasn’t so clear in reporting her spending to the state. Commissioner Jean Ginn Marvin questioned why the reports weren’t clear about who was behind Mountain Top Productions, a name Phil Merrill has used for his wife’s campaign only. His previous political consulting was done through a company called the Kennebec Group.
Phil Merrill argued that there was no attempt to be sneaky; he filmed advertisements in front of the Statehouse. It’s doubtful, however, that he was announcing at the time how much his wife’s campaign was paying him to film them – or, rather, how much he was paying himself to film them.
As the auditor, Vincent Dinan, pointed out, Barbara Merrill wasn’t just a client of her husband’s political consulting firm; Phil Merrill also served as the deputy treasurer for the campaign – a clear conflict of interest.
“This practice would not be accepted in any organization I know of,” Dinan said. “It’s a questions of internal controls. The person who is paying for the service is also the person providing the service.”
We agree. Nobody would run a company that way, and no political candidate running for the state’s highest office should run her campaign that way. Should taxpayers trust that she wouldn’t run the state the same way?
It’s a shame, because Merrill had such a strong showing in a race in which she was a clear underdog. She was the first independent candidate to qualify for public funding, and ultimately got 21 percent of the vote.
However, this recent disclosure mars her campaign and the reputation of a law that can help provide money and exposure to candidates who aren’t lucky enough to be one of the frontrunners in a race.
Brendan Moran, editor
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