Try these Maine political trivia questions on your friends.
Side effects may include being tagged the “C-SPAN Dork,” causing rooms the size of the Augusta Civic Center to empty whenever you enter, and being chosen as an op-ed columnist for the Portland Press Herald. If geekiness persists, consult your bartender.
This first question was originally raised on the conservative Web site “As Maine Goes” (motto: The Last Time Any Of Us Had A Date, Ronald Reagan Was Still A Democrat):
Who was the most recent US senator from Maine to be a resident of the 1st Congressional District?
The answer is in the next paragraph. Don’t peek.
First, a clarification: US senators aren’t elected by district and can live anywhere in the state. Lately, most of them have come out of northern Maine’s 2nd District, but you don’t have to travel too far back in time to find an exception. Current senator Olympia Snowe, a former 2nd District congresswoman from Auburn, now resides in Falmouth, and it was from there she was re-elected in 2006.
Caribou native Susan Collins claimed residence in the 1st District town of Standish during her 1994 campaign for governor, but reverted to her 2nd District roots before she won a Senate seat in ’96. She now lives in Bangor.
The last senator who was originally from the 1st District was George Mitchell, who retired in 1994. But, thanks to redistricting, Mitchell’s hometown of Waterville is now in the 2nd District. The most recent non-carpet-bagging senator elected from a town currently in the 1st District was Frederick Payne of Waldoboro. But Waldoboro wasn’t in the 1st District when Payne won his seat in 1952. The last senator from a place that was in the 1st District then and still is turns out to be Frederick Hale of Portland, who packed it in 1941.
If US representative Tom Allen of Portland runs against Collins next year and wins, he’ll end a 67-year drought.
Anybody still awake?
The next question grew out of an e-mail from a self-proclaimed “political junkie,” who was trying to sell me on the ridiculous idea that after Allen loses the ’08 Senate race to Collins, he’ll run for state attorney general to set himself up for a gubernatorial bid in 2010. I pointed out that the Legislature chooses the AG, as well as the other constitutional officers — secretary of state and state treasurer — and the positions almost always go to ex-legislators. Which Allen is not.
When was the last time, I asked the junkie, somebody who’s never served in the state House or Senate won one of those choice jobs?
Pause. Think. That sucking sound you hear is your social life draining away.
The junkie’s answer was Ken Curtis, who was picked by the Democrats as secretary of state two years before his 1966 election as governor. That sounded right to me, but I was required by journalistic ethics (could somebody shut off the oxymoron alarm) to check. When I did, I discovered the junkie was not only off base about Allen’s plans, but also wrong to pick Curtis.
In 1978, Republicans kept control of the Legislature by a narrow margin. So narrow that prominent members of the GOP, anticipating a Democratic victory, didn’t bother to run for the constitutional posts. That left the Republican nomination for AG to an obscure deputy attorney general, who had never been elected to anything. His name was Richard Cohen.
