“Love at First Sight, Young Couple Elope,” was the headline accompanying the only front-page photo in the most read daily newspaper in Maine’s largest city, the Portland Evening Express.

The story stated well-known Portland actor David P. Perkins, while performing with his vaudeville troupe, was swept off his feet by a “beautiful young woman,” who was already engaged to a wealthy young society man. The couple eloped to Williamsport, Penn., where they married only two days after the performance at which they met.

This story garnered so much attention on March 13, 1907, it could have been leading news in that afternoon’s Express, had it not been for another dramatic development: the Maine Senate’s vote to take the capital away from Augusta and betroth it to Portland.

Though it had been 75 years since Maine had forsaken Portland as its capital (it moved to Augusta in 1832) Maine’s largest city had never reconciled playing the governmental “best man” to Augusta. Even after the move, Portland remained the nerve center for several federal agencies and state court systems; in ensuing years, it also made several bids to regain its title. The last and most nearly successful came when the Legislature met 100 years ago.

Overcrowding at the State House was so acute at the beginning of the 1907 Legislative session that Governor William T. Cobb complained its rooms lacked the “ordinary requisites of good light and air.” He pleaded for funds to build additional offices to provide needed space for the expanded missions of Maine’s state government.

Portland’s business and civic leaders then offered $750,000 – more than half the estimate for new offices – and a ready site if the state re-located the capital to their city.

Portland’s four daily newspapers led the city’s charge. Front-page political cartoons and stories trumpeted the cause, while also loudly debunking Augusta’s interests. A front-page headline in the city’s only Democratic paper, the Eastern Argus, termed the reasoning behind Portland’s proposal as “convincing and unanswerable.”

The Evening Express, a Republican paper, also asserted a front-page viewpoint with similar encomiums, calling Portland’s offer as one “which practically gives Maine a Capitol for nothing in State’s largest, richest, busiest, most beautiful and, considering ease of access, most central city.”

Portland’s papers also took Augusta’s only daily, the Kennebec Journal, to task for refusing to run stories or advertisements favorable to Portland’s bid. Amidst the capital location debate, Augusta retailers were even accused of boycotting Portland wholesalers.

For its part, the Kennebec Journal and others, led by the Grange, who favored Augusta as the capital, called Portland a less centralized location. They also questioned Portland’s estimates of building a new State House as too conservative, and warned of recent state capital overruns in other states.

In Massachusetts, for example, the KJ cited an original estimate of $2.25 million that ballooned into $6 million; for Pennsylvania, an estimate of $4 million turned into an eventual $13 million.

Lewiston’s leading daily, the Evening Journal, argued against both Augusta and Portland, stating Lewiston-Auburn should be Maine’s capital instead. It proclaimed the cities best represented the “modern ideas” of manufacture and transportation, including its railroad and trolley system. The Journal also declared that “the twin cities are the center of the globe, from the Maine view point.”

Though Lewiston-Auburn leaders didn’t step forward with financial inducements to support a capital relocation, the Journal’s contention that alternatives besides Portland were being overlooked was echoed by Bangor senator, and future governor, Frederick Parkhurst during the Legislative debate.

Newspapers carried banner-style advertisements on the issue. “Only $540,000 Cost to the State and Portland Does the Rest,” was one supporting Portland. Opponents rejoined with “Don’t Be Deceived!…. an expense second only to that incurred by the Civil WarWhy should we throw away our present beautiful granite State House..?”

Moving Maine’s capital to Portland won a 16 to 15 Senate vote in March to send the issue to public referendum, the same day news of Perkins’ romantic elopement broke. The move drew appeal from outside Southern Maine: two senators from Aroostook County and both from Androscoggin County, voted to move the capital to Portland.

The House of Representatives had other ideas, however. It’s 75 to 51 vote against Portland’s proposal doomed the city’s last serious bid to reclaim Maine’s seat of government.

Sealing Portland’s fate even further was a 1909-1910 renovation in Augusta that doubled the State House’s size, and a 1911 Constitutional amendment ratified by 59 percent of voters declaring Augusta the seat of government.

The decision to stick with Augusta as capital found modern-day vindication in the 2000 census. At the dawn of the 2lst-century, the census placed Maine’s population center near Route 105, less than 10 miles east of Augusta.

Move the capital to Windsor, anybody?

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].