Few spoons stir the local political pot as vigorously as selection of a high school principal, but when for the first time in 25 years a vacancy occurred in the leadership of Deering High, one of Maine’s largest and most prestigious, the pot boiled over for Portland’s School Committee. At issue was the committee’s decision to pass over long-time sub-principal John Ham and bring in Massachusetts school administrator Donald Hale for the position. At the school committee meeting called to confirm Hale’s appointment some three hundred parents, students and teachers turned out to urge his rejection so that the popular Ham could be installed instead. The school valedictorian presented a petition with 765 student names backing Ham. A parade of prominent community leaders including Portland attorney and father of future Congressman Tom Allen, Charles W. Allen, also weighed in on Ham’s behalf.

Though the Portland school board seemed to be alone it was nevertheless unanimous in siding with Hale over Ham.

Within four days after the school committee meeting that confirmed Hale the recall effort got under way, led by oil burner serviceman and Deering High parent Gordon Crowley who in short order came through with the 3,000 signatures necessary to trigger a recall election.

Despite a groundswell of popular disaffection with the school committee decision, the recall effort appeared to have created a backlash of sympathy and support for the committee, which included some of the city’s most socially prominent and professionally esteemed leaders. The recall effort encountered staunch opposition of the city’s influential morning daily, The Press Herald, the paper taking the extraordinary step of publishing a front page election day editorial characterizing the recall as a “perversion of the whole principle of orderly democratic government,” and denouncing it as a “weapon of revenge.”

When the votes were counted the three school committee men and two school committee women who were the subject of the attempted recall held on to their positions by a nearly 2 to 1 margin.

The 1998 recall of Waterville Mayor Ruth Joseph

When Ruth Joseph was elected to her first term as Waterville Mayor in 1995 she was emerging from her seventh term in the legislature where she served three terms as Chairman of the State and Local Government Committee and where she once held a coveted seat on Appropriations. But the transition from being one of Maine’s more seasoned legislators to being one of its most powerful mayors would not prove easy for Ruth Joseph. By 1998 five of the seven city councilors called upon Joseph to resign. Their letter demanding resignation called the mayor on the carpet for failing to seek council approval for a number of administrative changes, personnel matters and inability to communicate candidly with city employees and the business community.

The next day the recall effort got under way with petitions bearing the necessary fifteen hundred signatures garnered within two weeks and the recall election a mere one month later resulting in a 2417 to 1207 tally to oust her from the position.

Though two of the city’s seven city councilors vigorously supported Joseph’s valiant bid to save her job what distinguished the Waterville recall effort from the Portland experience was that it had the overt backing of most of the city’s political as well as media establishment. Moreover, a single leader is a more vulnerable target than an illuminated array of Portland’s five leading lights.

LARRY SIMPSON AND THE STANDISH RECALL SAGA

Like Ruth Joseph, Larry Simpson plunged into municipal affairs in his hometown with an impressive background of state political leadership. Chairman of the 1974 Republican State Convention at a time when he was majority floor leader of the Maine House he was also viewed as a possible contender for the U.S. Senate in the 1970s.

By 1988 Simpson was a Standish Town Councilor and by a vote of 1,765 to 1,269 his fellow townsmen recalled him from the position, this arising from alleged conflict of interest between his position as a real estate broker and that of town councilor.

Ten years later Simpson won back his position and appeared to be on the comeback trail when in less than a year another recall effort was launched, this one arising out of a series of disputes that sparked controversy in the aftermath of a controversial decision to buy out the contract of the town manager. Among the charges against Simpson were that he had inappropriately accused a fellow councilor of conflict of interest and that Simpson was unduly adversarial in his personal demeanor while serving on the council.

This time, however, the recall effort failed, 1,636 to 1,191.

Simpson, who today is Town Council Chairman explained to this columnist a few days ago that one reason for his vindication in the second recall was a change in the town charter that required a public hearing before a recall vote. Simpson attributed his failure to withstand the recall a decade before to the absence of any similar forum by which he could defend his actions.

The fervor of recall activity in our nation’s most popular state resonates far beyond the Sierra Nevada borders and even in recent weeks has touched off copycat-recall petition efforts in both Bangor and Brewer, for example.

It is a form of political control that Maine voters are likely to hear even more about. Taking a look back at some of the more eventful episodes in Maine’s recall election histories might also be a guide to foretelling their future outcome.

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