Maine Republicans saw their numbers drop in both the state Senate and the House in the recent election, but a hotly contested battle among three Democrats to become the state's top lawyer has potentially placed the minority party in the position of becoming kingmaker. And in this race, it comes down to a case of who the Republicans don't want for the job. Josh Tardy is a practicing attorney who serves as the House Minority leader. “There is a concern that one of the candidates, Representative Faircloth, does not have the qualifications and the experience that many people believe should be a predicate to serving as the top law enforcement officer in the State.” In addition to Sean Faircloth of Bangor, the two other Democratic candidates for the job are former District Attorney Janet Mills of Farmington, who now works in private legal practice, and John Brautigam, an attorney from Falmouth who successfully defended Maine’s RX Law in the U.S. Supreme Court as an assistant attorney general. Tardy says Faircloth's comparative lack of legal experience and what others are describing as attempts by Faircloth to embellish his resume are the primary reasons why Republicans could very well nominate Mills or Brautigam as their own candidate should Democrats select Faircloth as their choice for the four-year position that carries a $90,000 annual salary. “I think that whatever you put on your resume should come under sufficient scrutiny, should come under a real microscope. When you’re running for attorney general, I would hope that the public has a right to know authentic credentials as set forth on an application or on a resume.”

 

At candidate forums and in questionnaires, Faircloth has said that he handled hundreds of child enforcement cases, hundreds of child protective cases, and prosecuted drug cases as an assistant attorney general, a job he held for less than three years between 1990 and 1992. But Faircloth does not specifically name law cases that he handled or describe his role, and Josh Tardy remains skeptical. “I’ve never been involved in a case where Sean Faircloth was working on the case, either as co-council or as opposing council. I question whether he has, in fact, prosecuted as I think he says ‘hundreds of cases.’”

 

Up until two years ago, Faircloth let his law license in Maine go into inactive status for five years while he taught courses at several University of Maine campuses. Faircloth sought active status in 2006 when he was elected assistant House Majority Leader, a position that brought him into contact with many of the new and returning Democratic members of the House. They will all be sworn into office next month when the Legislature elects the state's next attorney general, a job Faircloth has been seeking for more than a year.

 

Faircloth worked for about two years at a Bangor law firm before obtaining a political appointment as legal counsel to the president of the Maine Senate for the next two years. But according to his resume, most of the last 16 years have been spent as a lawmaker rather than in the practice of law. And while Faircloth did serve on other commissions related to criminal justice issues, he was not a member of the one that he recently listed at a candidates’ forum in Portland. Faircloth: “I was appointed to the Maine Commission on Legal deeds under the leadership of Senator Edmund S. Muskie.”

 

“I don’t recall that he was on that.” Janet Mills, one of Faircloth's opponents, says she followed the commission's work at the time and did not remember Faircloth's involvement. In fact, a check of the commission's membership mentions that Faircloth's boss at the time, Senate President Charles Pray, was a member. Faircloth has declined to talk on tape about the discrepancy, but has since explained to MPBN that he was asked to sit in on a meeting at Pray’s request.  Opponent John Brautigam says the explanation sounds like a stretch. “Participating in a meeting, being present for a meeting is not being a member of a commission.”

 

On his resume, Faircloth also says he spearheaded the so-called Deadbeat Dad Bill in 1993 that resulted in the seizure of state licenses from those who would not pay their child support. The original bill was launched by Governor John R. McKernan and included a number of co-sponsors. Faircloth was not among them. Faircloth did serve on the Judiciary Committee that killed the Deadbeat Dad Bill. And he maintains that he did work to ensure that the legislation was rolled into the state budget in an effort to balance the books. But state Senator Debra Plowman, a Hampden Republican who was a co-sponsor of the original bill, and also served on the judiciary committee disputes Faircloth's description of his leadership role in the process. “Well, I’d say it would have to be an exaggeration because I’ll tell you the people who moved that through the legislative process were the Republicans on the Legislative committee, Appropriations Committee, and Representative Kerr.”

 

When asked about his management credentials to oversee more than 100 attorneys in the AG’s office, Faircloth refers to his experience as assistant House Majority Leader. He also claims to have supervised a staff at the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor that went from zero to 20 employees in the mid 1990s. A check with the museum's director, Andrea Stark, indicated that the number of employees that Faircloth supervised was more like six. In a response to a questionnaire from a lawmaker, Faircloth said he was a founder of the museum that he described as a project involving hundreds of staff, volunteers and others.

 

“That’s quite a big difference between ‘hundreds’ and ‘six’. So, I don’t think he can embellish this, you have to really state the facts.”  Representative Tom Saviello, an independent in the Legislature, opposes Faircloth’s bid for the AG position and says Faircloth is more grounded in politics than the law. And Saviello says he takes issue with the fact that Faircloth rose twice from the floor this year to speak in favor of a bill to allow child care workers to join the Maine State Employees Association. What Faircloth didn't say at the time was that his wife, Aymie Walshe, was being paid by the MSEA to push the bill through the Legislature as a lobbyist. “You know, that’s one thing to have your wife lobbing the bill but then to get up on the floor of the house and literally speak in favor of it, that’s an example of where I think an attorney general, who as a potential candidate, will have to differentiate for that. He may want to lobby it in the hallways, he may want to talk to his fellow legislators, but when it comes to the floor of the House, you don’t come up and speak on that particular bill.”

 

House Speaker Glenn Cummings says even though Faircloth did not violate any House ethics rules, there was discussion among the legislature's leadership team about Faircloth’s intention to speak on behalf of the bill. And, Cummings says that if he had it to do over again, he would advise Faircloth to let others make the speeches for him and to disclose his wife's role as a lobbyist on the bill to other members. “It may have been helpful to be a little bit more cautious and perhaps a little bit more removed from it than making a speech on the floor of the House. But I think at the end of the day Representative Faircloth felt very passionately about the issue and I think he wanted to lend his voice to it.”

 

MPBN has asked Faircloth to respond to the criticisms leveled by Saviello, but he has offered no comment. Democrats will caucus next Tuesday and choose their candidate for attorney general.