Clean elections advocates in Maine are keeping a close eye on the U.S. Supreme Court, which indicated this week that it intends to consider the constitutionality of a key element in public campaign funding systems. In a case out of Arizona, the court put a temporary hold on that state's ability to distribute matching campaign funds to publicly-funded candidates.

On Tuesday, Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily stopped Arizona from distributing matching campaign funds to publicly-financed candidates. Matching funds are additional payments that are triggered whenever a privately-funded opponent raises or spends a certain amount of money.

In bringing the court challenge, opponents of the law say that the matching funds provision has a chilling effect on the free-speech rights of privately financed candidates. "For the first time in 10 years, Arizona is going to be able to conduct an election without having the government place its thumb on the scales in favor of publicly-financed candidates," says Bill Maurer, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, which is helping to represent opponents of matching funds in the Arizona case.

"Basically, everytime they speak, every time they spend money, the government will provide their opponents, oftentimes more than one opponent, with money to overwhelm that message, and that creates a disincentive, if not an outright ban on the ability of people to speak freely about political matters," Maurer says.

Maurer says while the court hasn't ruled on the case itself, the fact that it has temporarly suspended the matching funds provision in Arizona indicates that it is clearly interested in the issue.

Supporters of the matching funds system meanwhile, say it's too early to say what the Arizona case will mean for Maine's Clean Elections Act.

"I don't think we need to worry about the law, I think we need to worry about the court," says Alison Smith of Maine Citizens For Clean Elections. Smith says the court has acted aggressively on an issue that other circuit courts have upheld.

And she says Maine's law has clearly worked well, as evidenced by Tuesday's election. "We just finished an extremely robust primary in the gubernatorial race, which was very high profile. We had public funds and matching funds and private funds and candidates reporting their spending, and we have a very open, transparent system that is popular among candidates and voters, and it all worked great and I don't think anybody could say with a straight face that we had any kind of a chill on political speech because of our campaign finance system," Smith says.

In fact, Maine's law has already been upheld in federal court, says Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the Maine Ethics Commission. Wayne says the First Circuit Court of Appeals scrutinized the law a decade ago,

"And what the court found was that the matching funds part of the program doesn't, in any way, infringe on the ability of candidates to speak or independent spenders to speak," Wayne says. "It just provides more money for the opposing candidates to be able to respond. So that is what the First Circuit has said. That's what's going to be governing our program in 2010, and until the U.S. Supreme Court tells us differently, that's how we're going to be operating this year."

Wayne says while the Supreme Court is not expected to rule until well after this year's November election, there's no doubt that the Legislature will keep a close eye on the Arizona case. If the court does throw out the matching funds provision, Wayne says Maine could borrow from several options already in use in other states

"Some states have turned to allowing a publicly-funded candidate to raise campaign contributions, others have looked at providing additional public money to candidates who can demonstrate that they're in a highly competitive race, not because of their opponents' fundraising or spending, but just through other factors, so there are a variety of options that the Legislature could look at," Wayne says.

Maine 1st District Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, meanwhile, is pushing for a federal Clean Elections law called the Fair Elections Now Act, along with Connecticut Democrat John Larson. She says the proposed law avoids the matching funds provision that triggered the Arizona court battle. Instead, she says, candidates would receive a four-to-one match based on their own fundraising, not that of their opponent.