Today was the deadline for major party candidates to submit the signatures they'll need to qualify for the June primary ballot in Maine. Almost all of the declared candidates for governor appear to have met the deadline, except for one. Lynne Williams, a Bar Harbor lawyer and the presumptive nominee of the Green Independent Party, was forced to drop out of the race after she failed to collect the signatures of at least 2,000 registered Maine voters. It's the first time in 16 years that the Greens will not have a candidate on the ballot in the November general election.

As she emerged as the likely nominee for the Green Independent Party, Lynne Williams faced several major hurdles. To qualify for public financing, she'd have to gather the required $5 contributions and $40,000 dollars in seed money. But Williams fell short and withdrew her application for Clean Elections funding.

The second hurdle was to gather enough signatures to qualify for a place on the ballot, and, again, Williams fell short. "I did not get my 2,000 signatures of Greens," she says.

And although the Greens will retain their official party status, Williams' failure to gather at least 2,000 signatures from about 30,000 registered Green voters means that for the first gubernatorial election since 1994, there won't be a Green on the ballot. Williams blamed her failure to qualify on a nomination process that is biased against small parties.

"The Democrats need to collect one-half-of-one-percent of their registered voters, we need to collect six percent of our registered voters," she says. "So I think, you know, if you can visualize these numbers, I think we could say that's one reason I didn't get my signatures. The second is we did not use paid signature collectors."

Williams, a Bar Harbor lawyer, will now focus her efforts on building the party throughout the state. But she says she's also considering a lawsuit against the state to seek a change in the qualifying threshold for candidacy. "I think that the way to go with these signatures is a percentage of registration, as opposed to a flat number," she says.

Pollster Patrick Murphy, who runs Portland-based Strategic Marketing Services, says Williams' withdrawal is a setback for the Greens, whose past Blaine House candidates, Jonathan Carter and Pat LaMarche, helped establish the party's status in Maine.

"Somebody like Pat LaMarche was able to get 10 percent of the vote, and somebody else emerges of that ilk, you know, it doesn't mean that they won't get out the next time and pull a reasonable slice of the vote," he says. "But in the short-term it's really not a good thing for them, and it certainly doesn't help for their recruitment, etcetera."

But Nancy Allen, a Brooksville resident and one of the early organizers of the Maine Greens who helped the party gain official party status in the state, says Williams' failure to qualify has less to do with her effort or personal appeal than it does with where people are today politically.

"I think that politics has a bad name right now, no matter what you're doing in it," Allen says. "And I think that the Green Party is kind of a wishful thinking place for young people, and I just don't know whether the Green Party's vision has been sustainable."

Cumberland County Green Party organizer Ben Chipman says Williams suspended candidacy really gives the Greens a chance to focus on legislative races where they've had some success in the past.

"If we don't have a candidate for governor, I mean, obviously, we're going to remain a party, in terms of official status," Chipman says. "But I think it might be a chance for us to focus on races that we can win and races that we have won in the past."

In an e-mail to her supporters, Williams apologized to those who felt disappointed by her failure to qualify. She signed her message with the word Lynne --- in green.