To be elected to major public office in Maine, one does not have to buck the establishment. But it doens’t hurt. Just look at the resounding popularity of our present U.S. Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Both frequently take positions — like on health care or other issues — off to one side of GOP leadership.

Jim Longley Sr. and Angus King, both Democrats who left their parties to win election as independent governors, are other examples. The Democrat elected four times to the U.S. House from the rural 2nd Congressional District and who went on to upset Margaret Chase Smith for the U.S. Senate seat is another. He’s Bill Hathaway, whose represented this state in Washington for 14 years. (And has been the subject of my last two columns.)

But there’s more to Hathaway than his Congressional career, as I found out when sitting down with him recently to discuss the path his life has taken since leaving the Senate 31 years ago.

Now 85, it’s refreshing to report Hathaway is as alert and engaged with public affairs as he was when he last held office. Moreover, the unassuming, nonpartisan demeanor that led Washington Magazine in 1978 to name him one of l6 “most well liked by colleagues” also came through during our recent visits.

After his 1978 election loss to William Cohen, Hathaway signed on as a lobbyist with Patton Boggs, a leading Washington-based law firm. His first client, Chrysler, was then beset with a predicament with a contemporary ring: a distressed car manufacturer seeking a government rescue. When asked to compare the Chrysler crises with the auto industry’s present dilemma, Hathaway observed:

“Well, they’re quite similar. Of course, the Chrysler bailout worked out very well. In fact with Chrysler, the federal government wound up making money as the result of the bailout because we got them out of it and then they had to pay back the loan with a fee on top of that.”

Soon after closing his file on the Chrysler case, Hathaway would demonstrate his personal political loyalties were not tied to the industrial establishment. That occurred in 1980, when his former colleague, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, ran for president. Hathaway went on the stump in Maine to campaign for the Massachusetts senator. It was a quest that resulted in the Pine Tree State supporting Kennedy, but nevertheless fell short of the national goal of denying President Jimmy Carter his re-nomination.

All the while, Hathaway, a Harvard-educated attorney, continued his lobbying career, usually for corporations. Befitting his somewhat individualistic approach, it’s not the subject of his fondest memories.

“I wasn’t nuts about lobbying. Lobbying is asking your friends for favors is what it amounts to,” he said. “It paid well, though, I can’t object to the pay I was getting but I really didn’t enjoy doing that kind of work.”

It took over a decade before Hathaway would be called back to the public sector. This came in 1990, with his appointment by George H.W. Bush to the Federal Maritime Commission, or “FMC.” The Democrat Hathaway’s entrée to the GOP president was facilitated by Hathaway’s association with Bush’s vice-president, Dan Quayle, a long-time Hathaway golfing partner. That the conservative Quayle should be on such good terms with a Kennedy Democrat typified Hathaway’s collegial approach, one much more common among public figures then than it is today.

Another irony led to Hathaway’s next position. Despite the defeat in the 1992 elections of his patron, Quayle, President Clinton moved Hathaway to the chair’s position shortly after his election (being of the same political party as the incoming president didn’t hurt).

At the FMC, Hathaway’s most memorable action was forcing Japanese shipping companies to stop discriminating against American carriers. This occurred only after Hathaway and his fellow commissioners levied millions of dollars in fines against the Japanese for charging port fees, from which their ships were exempted.

Another accomplishment at the commission was helping the European Union end unfair pricing by a cartel that controlled Atlantic shipping. By l994, Hathaway’s one-time legislative assistant, Angus King, was elected governor. Though Hathaway played no part in the campaign, King paid tribute to Hathaway as one of his “life’s political mentors and heroes,” moving Hathaway’s portrait into a premiere position in the State House Cabinet room.

After leaving the FMC in 1996, Hathaway resumed lobbying but only on a pro-bono basis. Thus, going about button-holing elected officials was done on terms more attuned with his public-spirited character. One of his successes was for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, in the 2000 law that denied federal transportation money to states that refused to lower the blood alcohol level required to convict drunk driving offenders.

The new standard — which Maine and nearly all other states adopted — is .08 percent.

A current cause is helping Jeanette Williams obtain a posthumous pardon for her husband, Pete Williams, a long-time New Jersey senator swept up in the so-called Abscam bribery scandal in 1981. Hathaway feels his former colleague, who was chair of the Labor Committee on which Hathaway served, was the victim of entrapment and was unjustly convicted.

“I liked him very much,” said Hathaway. “I thought he was a very hard working guy and I’m sorry and kind of surprised he got into the mess he got in but he did.” Championing a cause that may not have wide popular appeal is in the independent tradition that is unique to Maine public leaders.

It’s also classic Hathaway.

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].

Bill Hathaway, former Maine senator