Maine’s 1st congressional district has seen a group of Democratic candidates rush to the left this cycle, but as the primary draws to a close, a middle-of-the-road political neophyte is shaking things up.

Portland attorney and Iraq veteran Adam Cote has seen a surge in recent weeks, with some calling him the main alternative to early front-runner Chellie Pingree in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

There are many unknowns in the primary, given the complete lack of public polling and the wide field, combined with the expected low voter turnout. Most analysts close to the race see Pingree out front, but Cote’s emergence has garnered notice, especially over the last handful of days.

“He’s definitely the one person who’s managed to move ahead,” said Pingree, who resigned as president of Common Cause to run for Congress. “That’s partly because he’s had a tremendous amount of funding, a lot of it from groups that don’t normally support Democrats.”

Cote has raised a lot of money, thanks in large part to the support of the business community. He has been endorsed by BIPAC, a bipartisan business political action committee that tends to support Republicans more than Democrats, and the Credit Union National Association PAC (CULAC) has spent $135,000 on mailers in his name.

He has used the money to good effect, and last week he was endorsed by the Portland Press-Herald, the state’s largest newspaper.

There is also anecdotal evidence of Republicans, particularly those from the business community, crossing over to vote for Cote in the Democratic primary, similar to what occurred in the Democratic presidential race.

State Sen. Karl Turner has even switched, for the moment, from Republican to Democrat simply to vote in the Democratic race.

Turner said several other well-known public figures in the GOP have done the same thing, but he wouldn’t name names.

“I’m the one that got outed,” he said. “I’m a slow-moving target, I guess.”

Turner wouldn’t actually say who he’s voting for, but the choice is clear for Tony Payne, the head of the nonpartisan pro-business Alliance for Maine’s Future. Payne said he switched parties to vote for Cote, and noted he’s not the only one.

“I was at a meeting of independent business owners about a month and a half ago, and I was just stunned by the number of people who volunteered without any prompting that they had done the same thing,” said Payne, who has run for Congress as a Republican.

Because of the business and GOP support, along with his traction, Cote began to draw fire from some of his Democratic opponents.

They have solid material to work with: Cote registered Republican in 2000 and changed to Democrat only before signing up to run for Congress.

He said he wanted to vote against President Bush in 2000 after the Democratic race was effectively over, and he never bothered to switch back.

“Only in my race can you be pro-choice, support gay rights, universal access to healthcare, getting off foreign oil and out of Iraq responsibly, and be accused of being conservative,” Cote said. “Most Mainers aren’t there — they’re not way out there like the other candidates are.”

Cote noted that his three main foes — Pingree, York County District Attorney Mark Lawrence and state Sen. Ethan Strimling — have all called for impeaching President Bush. They have also advocated issues like single-payer universal healthcare and immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq, which are harder-left than Cote’s positions and further than some Democrats are willing to go.

A race to the left is typical in a multi-candidate Democratic primary, but their positioning and crowding might have left Cote an opening.

Bowdoin College government Professor Michael Franz said he was surprised to see Pingree, Lawrence and Strimling support impeachment and that it has become such a campaign issue. Lawrence has actually run ads on it.

“Adam Cote has been able to basically say, ‘Look, this is pathetic, this is crazy, impeachment is not something we should really be talking about,’ ” Franz said. “And that’s helped him a little bit.”

Even as the candidates have commenced going after Cote, Pingree has largely stayed above the fray — a tack that suggests confidence in where she stands in the polling.

An early survey released by the Pingree campaign and conducted in February had her at 38 percent and no other candidate in double digits.

Pingree began the race as a well-known former state lawmaker who ran against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in 2002, so she undoubtedly started with an edge in name recognition.

Pingree lost the Senate race, 58-42, in a strong year for the GOP. Allen is now challenging Collins.

Despite Pingree’s early edge in the House race, the top four candidates have raised big money and been able to spread their message in the south Maine district.

Pingree led the pack with $1.4 million raised and $350,000 on hand as of May 21. Cote, Lawrence and Strimling, who are considered her main competitors of the six-candidate field, had all raised between about $450,000 and $600,000 at that point and had much less in the bank.

Lawrence’s political director, Marc Malon, said he could make a case that any of the four could win Tuesday because of the race’s nature.

Malon gave the example that Lawrence could have a geographical edge as the York County candidate. York typically comprises more than one-fourth of the vote in the district.

“Maine primary campaigns tend to be very unpredictable,” Malon said, adding: “It’s sort of like New Hampshire, where people make their minds up in the ballot box.”

Two Republicans are vying for their party’s nomination: Iraq veteran and former state Sen. Charles Summers and businessman Dean Scontras. Summers fell to Allen, 60-40, in 2004.