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By EDWARD D. MURPHY
MaineToday Media, Inc. 12/05/2007

MaineToday Media, Inc.

It has all the trappings of a political campaign.

Print ads, radio ads, television ads, even YouTube ads. Testimonials. Competing analyses of proposals. Encouragement to call the governor or other elected officials.

Despite the mass media appeal residents, the politicking in this case is aimed at nine unelected officials: public utilities commissioners in Maine and New Hampshire, and members of the Public Service Board in Vermont.

FairPoint Communications wants to buy the land-line telephone business now owned by Verizon in the three states. Unions and some consumer advocates oppose the deal.

And both sides are jockeying to try to make sure that everyone knows where they stand.

"We recognize that it's important to influence the environment that the decision gets made in," said Rand Wilson, a spokesman for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Communications Workers of America, the two unions that are running ads aimed at derailing the $2.7 billion deal. "While the PUC commissioners are unelected and they make the decisions based on the merits of the case ... they're making that decision in an environment and everyone is trying to affect that environment."

"It has become a political process, not just here, but in all three states," said Walter E. Leach Jr., FairPoint's executive vice president for corporate development.

Adopting a political-style campaign for what is, technically at least, a non-political issue is relatively rare in Maine, said Ronald Schmidt, associate professor of political science at the University of Southern Maine, but it is becoming more common nationally.

In this case, both sides have decided to boil the information down to one aspect of the issue: whether FairPoint will be able to follow through on a promise to expand broadband Internet access to homes and businesses in the largely rural sections of the three states.

FairPoint is introducing itself as a friendly company that has the technical savvy and financial wherewithal to upgrade rural phone lines.

"FairPoint doesn't want to come across as the big, faceless company coming into Maine," Schmidt said, and that explains why some ads have featured Eugene B. Johnson, FairPoint's chairman and chief executive officer.

The unions are focusing on the broadband issue because that has wider appeal than other concerns the unions might have, such as worries about negotiating contracts with a new company.

Declines in union membership mean that issue wouldn't resonate with most people, Schmidt said.

"Unions don't have the kind of popularity they might have had 20 or 30 years ago, so it makes sense to take on that (broadband) issue," he said.

Neither side would divulge advertising budgets, and some of the campaign is being conducted by third parties. The Maine State Chamber of Commerce, for instance, ran a full-page ad in Tuesday's Portland Press Herald with comments by business leaders who support FairPoint and a suggestion that readers call the governor.

Bill Black, deputy public advocate for the PUC, said that won't do any good in Maine. Under state law, once the commission's hearing officer issues a report on the proposal -- that happened on Nov. 26 -- no one is allowed to talk to a commissioner about the issue.

"That means the governor's office, lobbyists for Verizon, lobbyists for FairPoint -- nobody," Black said.

Maine's three commissioners are set to deliberate the case and vote Dec. 13. The officials in New Hampshire and Vermont, all of whom are appointed by the governors of those states, are expected to decide by the end of this year.

Like politicians who go negative, each side blames the other for the campaigning.

"FairPoint has spent millions of dollars promoting this deal -- millions," said Wilson, the union spokesman. But "it's not that we've been escalating an attack on FairPoint."

Leach said the company felt that its record and its ability to handle the transaction were being misrepresented.

"We wanted to take the high road," he said. "If we didn't take a proactive public approach, the situation would have gotten worse."

Peter McLaughlin, business manager for IBEW Local 2327, said he saw the ads as a way to raise public awareness of the issues surrounding the transaction.

They will also allow him to sleep at night, he said.

If the union's fears are borne out and the deal gets approved in Maine, McLaughlin said, "I'm going to have a clear conscience to say I did the most I could to let everybody know."

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