By law, the state board that controls the use of pesticides must have at least two members with "a demonstrated interest in environmental protection."

Gov. John Baldacci, presented with a vacancy on the board for a seat that had been filled by an organic farmer, nominated Deborah Aldridge of Jonesboro. She's a former conventional blueberry farmer and now a certified organic farmer. She served on the Sunrise County Wild Blueberry Association, where she was a member of the board of directors. And Aldridge has been a frequent attendee at Board of Pesticides Control meetings over the years.

In the breadth of her experience, Aldridge was highly qualified to be a member of the board. She seemed like a perfect fit for one of the environmental seats mandated by law.

But she didn't get it. This week, the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee voted, 7-to-3, to deny Aldridge the seat on the board. It was a stunning defeat, and a rare occurrence for a nominee.

And it happened because of whispers.

At the committee hearing on Aldridge's nomination, not one group testified against her.

But she was met with hostility by all but a handful of lawmakers who, she told Portland Press-Herald reporter Ann S. Kim, "really kept hammering on me about how I felt about pesticides and their use. I said, clearly, on many occasions, there is a need for it."

Committee chairman Sen. John Nutting, D-Leeds, a dairy farmer who led the charge against Aldridge, said, "Her views toward conventional agriculture were concerning to just about all of the groups, be it the Farm Bureau, the Maine Dairymen's Association, the Maine Blueberry Commission, the Maine Potato Board." Particularly problematic, said Nutting, was a letter, widely circulated among blueberry farmers, that Aldridge sent to the Pesticides Control Board suggesting a 500-foot buffer for aerial spraying.

If Nutting heard opposition from those groups, they certainly didn't express it at the hearing. Neither the Farm Bureau nor the Maine Potato Board nor the Maine Dairy Industry Association (the Dairymen's Association hasn't existed since 1969) nor the Maine Wild Blueberry Commission testified against Aldridge.

And as Don Flannery, head of the Maine Potato Board said, "If we really wanted to express our concern, we could have done so."

Aldridge's rejection by the committee caused her to withdraw her nomination before a Senate vote that was likely to confirm her rejection.

The failed nomination happens in the midst of struggle by the pesticides board over appropriate limits on aerial pesticide spraying. Environmentalists as well as neighborhood activists have long questioned the safety of aerial spraying when it's done near residences or water bodies. In the last few years, lawsuits have been threatened against blueberry growers Downeast, the board has received petitions to ban aerial spraying and legislation has been introduced to change spraying regulations.

So the pesticides board has been working to revise its rules. It's been a vexing issue and a drawn-out battle. The board has been pressured on one side by those conventional growers who want to continue aerial spraying with a minimum of rules. On the other side are organic growers who want limits on spraying that include large buffer zones.

The lawmakers who devised the board's current structure wisely designed it to accommodate the range of Maine's agricultural universe, and it does. Besides the two environmental positions, there are three others for those with knowledge about pesticides in agriculture, forestry or commercial applications, one seat for someone with a medical background and another for a University of Maine faculty member in agronomy or entomology.

That's precisely the range of opinions that would produce good new policy on aerial spraying and any number of other important issues regarding pesticides.

But a candidate who had all the right qualifications for the board, whose nomination hearing featured not one group opposed to that nomination, who expressed openness to both conventional and organic methods of farming, had her nomination shot down.

Aldridge should have been confirmed.

We wonder which well-qualified person will next allow the governor to place their name in nomination?