The l954 election was not only symbolic for what it meant to Maine but is also critical to an understanding of Ed Muskie himself -the most influential Democratic party leader in Maine history. Years later, speaking to a crowd in Texas when he was the l968 party vice-presidential nominee Muskie recalled his l954 upset election.

“I never had an experience like that. If I win elections from now until the year 2000, this election, if we win it, wouldn’t be nearly the exhilarating experience of that one. We won against hopeless odds.”

The 50-year anniversary of this milestone is an occasion to not only recall the event itself but is also a time to reflect on a few other aspects of Muskie himself and his career as governor.

The first thing many would remember most was his face. Those slightly craggy, jagged edges also portrayed the condition of the very state that he would attempt to lead.

The secretary of state and powerful national leader that he would become we also can’t help wonder that if we had the opportunity to chisel his countenance into the side of a mountain in Maine what would we choose for a Mt. Rushmore? Mt. Katahdin you say? No, its highest peak belongs to the man who gave it to us, Gov. Baxter. Our second highest and most commercially prominent summit, Sugarloaf, is a more appropriate choice. It was in Muskie’s first term as governor that he officiated at a dedication ceremony that marked the opening of some of its earliest facilities and its transformation from a volunteer non-profit ski club to a profit aspiring corporation. It was in Muskie’s second term that many horseshoe-like curves were removed from the stretches of Route 27 through New Portland, Kingfield and Jerusalem that led to the Sugarloaf access road.

There’s a larger reason to some why Sugarloaf might be most appropriate. That lies in the business and some would say even bourgeois priorities of his two terms as governor. As Muskie’s fellow Waterville attorney Jerome Daviau observed in his “Maine’s Lifeblood,” the l958 call to arms of the modern environmental movement, Muskie’s “stunning election caused many heads to wag and deplore the state’s shift to the ‘left,’ but his re-election and the intervening events were to prove that there was no shift, except possibly to the right.”

Daviau’s book takes Muskie to task for his refusal to support measures designed to abate pollution in Maine’s streams and rivers and for Muskie’s perceived obeisance to industrial interests that Daviau regarded as intent on obstructing efforts to restore fish and other wildlife to Maine’s waterways. Especially ironic for a man who a decade later as a U. S. senator would win a reputation for leadership in the passage of federal clean air and water legislation was what Daviau perceived to be the refusal of the Muskie administration to take full advantage of federal assistance to construct sewer treatment facilities that would result in the clean-up of some of Maine’s then heavily polluted waters. Muskie’s re-appointment of a GOP holdover as department head of the state’s inland fish and game department – even though he had been opposed by the leading fish and game association and conservation groups was another of Muskie’s decisions to which Daviau pointed when making the case that Muskie was a conservative.

Muskie’s unwillingness as governor to take on the establishment in a fashion that would win support from a leading conservation and environmental figure such as Daviau is typical of the cautious approach Muskie had to governing Maine during his four-year tenure in the Blaine House.

Drawing upon more contemporary parallels Muskie as governor was far more of an Angus King than a James Longley Sr. Muskie was a governor who much like King sought to see what was attainable and practical, given the institutional limitations of the position, rather than one who relished the embattled confrontation on which the late Gov. Longley, for example, seemed to thrive.

As Muskie himself once observed, “But you know, I worked with the Republican Legislature, too. I didn’t really veto many bills, but I used another device … If a bill came to my desk and I found some good in it, I would call in the Republican leaders and I’d tell them, ‘Now, if you’ll take this out and that out, I’ll pass it through, and if you don’t I’ll veto it’ … and a lot of times they’d go back into conference and produce a bill that made more sense. I guess we saved maybe a hundred bills that way and we could have made each one a battleground”

The next time I make the drive out of Farmington toward Sugarloaf I’m still going to look for an appropriate location on this mountain – in contrast to one at Bigelow or the New Vineyard mountains which I’ll drive by en route – for a sculptor to affix Muskie’s unmistakable image on this the 50th anniversary of his first election as governor. I will do so knowing that Sugarloaf, as a privately operated commercial development in Maine’s pristine wilderness, might be a location that would not only meet with the approval of his supporters but is one that such conservation-minded critics as Jerome Daviau might also consider fitting. It’s a paradox that would also perhaps be in the Muskie gubernatorial tradition.

Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@midmaine.com

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