Gov. Tom Ridge says if Peg Luksik really wants to oppose "politics as usual," she should disclose her campaign donors more often than the law requires, as he does.

Luksik is the Constitutional Party candidate for governor who has said she is an agent for change in state government.

She responded by saying Ridge's Republican Party helped write the state law that makes her spend her summer collecting signatures instead of having a primary, like the Republicans. Another state law written by the major parties allows her to wait until September to reveal her donors.

Luksik, who has already aired two rounds of television commercials, will not become an official candidate on the fall ballot until August. That is when the nominating petitions she will submit at the end of July will be certified. She expects to submit more than twice the required 20,000 signatures.

"The Republicans and Democrats wrote the laws, and enjoy the benefits third parties don't," Luksik said. Now they have to live with the flip side of their laws, when it doesn't benefit them. Sometimes it's fun to make career politicians live by their own rules."

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ivan Itkin, the only gubernatorial candidate who didn't air TV ads in the midstate last week, says Luksik, the most successful statewide third-party candidate in 86 years, is abiding by the law.

"More power to her for being on TV," said Itkin, who believes Luksik will draw conservative votes away from Ridge.

At a campaign stop Wednesday, Ridge responded to a question about Luksik by referring to her as "the non-candidate who hasn't reported any of her campaign finances. It's fun to be critical of incumbents and call them 'politics as usual' and then not have to say who is funding your campaign."

Ballot access experts have said Pennsylvania has some of the nation's toughest laws aimed at keeping third parties off the ballot and away from voters. Ridge vetoed a bill that would have made the laws much more restrictive. But he has not ruled out supporting further ballot access restrictions in the future.

Luksik said that proved the governor is "not interested in openness. He's curious. He wants to see who's funding me."

Ridge has released his fund-raising reports monthly, twice as often as required by law.

Luksik said Ridge 'just can't stand it that I can get on television."

Luksik's Fourth of July-themed ads, which aired on midstate news broadcasts last week, did pique the interest of the Ridge campaign.

After the governor finished talking about Luksik, and sped away from a campaign event in Delaware County on Wednesday, a campaign aide whipped out a cell phone. She dialed up television stations, asking how many ad slots Luksik had bought.

Itkin, who is mocked in a current Ridge ad, believes this is the beginning of Ridge's attack on Luksik.

"We'll find out what she's been spending on her summer TV ads when we find out what Tom Ridge has been spending on his: in September," he said. "I think Tom Ridge knows that not only I will contest this election, but so will Ms. Luksik"