The second hand of Maine’s political clock passes 12 this Wednesday. That’s because as the first Wednesday in December after elections signifies the inauguration of a new state Legislature. Despite the advent of term limits, only eight of the 35 senators elected last month were not already part of the upper chamber.

However, even these newest members of Maine’s most exclusive political body come equipped with formidable resumes. Included among them is Dover-Foxcroft’s Douglas Smith, recently retired after 27 years as probate judge, and former Forest Management Director Walter Gooley of Farmington.

Lisa Marrache, a Waterville physician, will also be among the Senate’s newest members. She will be the Senate’s first doctor to take the oath of office since Old Town osteopath Roswell Bates in 1961.

Portland’s Joseph Brannigan, a former Catholic priest, crosses the Senate threshold this week as one of the state’s most experienced legislators. His 12-year sabbatical from the Senate has since included an eight-year reunion with the lower branch and includes several terms as chair in the House and Senate of the powerful appropriations committee.

Like nearly all other freshmen members of the senate, Smith, Gooley, Marrache, and Brannigan have unpacked their briefcases at the State House’s third floor before; all have spent at least six years in the House.

As impressive as these new arrival’s backgrounds are, few pre-Senate experiences offer the novelty of one of the two new senators who never held elective office: the former commander of the Portsmouth-Kittery Shipyard, Peter Bowman. This retired navy captain, who once headed the largest employer in Maine’s second-most populous county, is a man his colleagues will likely turn to over the next biennium.

Reached by this columnist at his Kittery home, Bowman offered some insights on who he is, and how he might cast his lot on leading issues.

Bowman was reared by middle-class Republicans in the Manhattan suburb of New Rochelle, N.Y., from where he departed for Cornell University’s Navy ROTC program in 1955. Electrical engineering training there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s graduate school led him to directorship of electrical systems for the nation’s nuclear submarines.

Bowman arrived in Maine in 1987 to take over the shipyard. Unlike most military personnel who come to the state for a three-year tour of duty, he has remained here since. Bowman points to Maine’s magnificent coastline as a feature that kept him with us in the 16 years since he left the shipyard’s helm. The “schlocky” nature of New Hampshire’s abbreviated 12-mile coastline deterred Bowman from joining other shipyard alumni in the Granite State.

Though the only Democrat taking over a Republican seat in this year’s Maine senate, Bowman sounded a theme more often identified with the GOP. Insisting his party needs to shed its “tax and spend” image, Bowman maintains government should operate “more like a business” and “restrain spending.” Despite his affinity for a GOP-sounding fiscal agenda, Bowman points to the parties’ divergence on social issues as motivating his Democratic allegiance.

Befitting one who served on the 1993 Defense Base Closure or “BRAC” commission, Bowman suggests chartering a like body to identify inefficiencies in state government. Such a state commission would have broad power to designate redundant facilities to target for termination. Like its federal counterpart, its mandate could only be overturned by the legislature on an “all or nothing” basis. This procedure, precluding as it does selective uses of the commission’s outcome, has at the federal level rendered “BRAC” recommendations tantamount to finality.

Bowman also credits some of his business-oriented values to the 11 years he spent after his Navy retirement as a vice-president of Gould Electronics, a Newburyport, Mass., electrical manufacturing company, owned in recent years by French and Japanese entities.

Though last year’s BRAC commission overturned the Pentagon and spared the Kittery shipyard, Bowman warns another base closure commission will likely convene in the next half-dozen years. How can we again keep Kittery off another Pentagon death row? Bowman stresses the need to “keep the yard vital,” and points to a recent $10 to $15 million dry-dock modernization as a positive development the state’s congressional delegation should continue to push. “Make sure that at the federal level the yard gets its share of military construction money,” he said.

At the state level, Bowman supports the local shipyard association’s efforts to heighten awareness of the yard’s economic contribution. Though citizen turnout at rallies and public forums is not a technical criteria for whether a yard remains open, Bowman believes such demonstrations – like the 7,000 who turned out during a visit by BRAC commissioners to Kittery, and the 80 school buses of citizens who traveled to the Boston regional hearings last year – made an influential impression on commission members.

Bowman contrasts the Kittery turnout at the Boston hearings, for example, with a meager representation from Brunswick, whose naval air station was given BRAC’s walking papers a few weeks later.

Bowman enters the senate blessed with one of the more unusual portfolios of experience for any freshman legislator. Moreover, he also comes from a town, which despite its peripheral location as our most southern municipality, is the only one to have been home to two two-term senate presidents: George Varney (1945 to 1949) and Mark Lawrence (1996 to 2000).

For these, and other reasons, as we turn the page this week to a new chapter of Maine public affairs, the career of Kittery’s Peter Bowman bears watching.

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: [email protected].