George Smith served as executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine for 18 years. In the nine months since his retirement, SAM has had two directors come and go and is now courting its third.

Those close to the nonprofit organization say the revolving door is due to the difficult organizational and financial challenges facing the non-profit organization.

Smith, who may have retired but who never stopped lobbying on behalf of sportsmen and women, recently wrote in his Web log: “Since I left the position last fall, SAM has offered the job to four people and hired three of them.”

The three have been Tim Bell, Matt Dunlap and, now, Sen. David Trahan, R-Waldoboro, a longtime member of the Legislature’s Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee.

Trahan hasn’t accepted the position, but he is expected to meet with the SAM board on Aug. 1 to discuss a formal job offer.

In the meantime, Trahan will have to sort out whether he can be a paid lobbyist and the very public head of one of the state’s most powerful advocacy groups and still serve in the Maine Senate.

Maine law is silent on whether being a legislator and a paid lobbyist is a conflict of interest

The amount of lobbying required of SAM’s executive director is so extreme that, last December when Bell served in that capacity, he asked the board to consider hiring an outside lobbyist. When the board did not, that led to Bell’s departure in January.

According to Dunlap, a former secretary of state and the director who replaced Bell, lobbying is “definitely a big part of the job. It’s always been something the director was expected to do.”

Trahan said he would not make a final decision on whether to accept the SAM position until he meets with the board to discuss compensation.

If he takes the job, he said, he does not expect to be in the Legislature when it reconvenes in January.

* * *

When Smith announced his retirement last year, Trahan said he considered applying for the job, and now wishes he had. He wasn’t enthusiastic about another Senate term and, after a 30-year career as a logger, his doctor recommended he find a less physically demanding line of work.

But, he persevered through the 2011 session, which he said “wasn’t pleasant.”

He was particularly upset about calls from tea party activists that his wife fielded at their home, described as “borderline abusive.”

While looking forward to the end of his Senate career, Trahan watched as Bell replaced Smith and then Dunlap replaced Bell at SAM.

Bell was widely seen as a surprising replacement for Smith. A native of Florida, he had rarely been in Maine, nor was he much of a sportsman.

“You wouldn’t have thought that if you’d been there at the interviews,” said Dunlap, who was a SAM board member at the time and has agreed to return to the board after stepping down as director.

“He had great organizational skills, had raised money, and knew the nonprofit world,” Dunlap said. “He gave a great presentation.”

But, from the start, there were signs that Bell’s tenure would be short. He didn’t seem to get the hang of Maine’s sporting culture, according to Smith. “The kindest thing I can say is Tim Bell wasn’t a good match for the job,” Smith wrote in his blog after Bell’s departure.

The board then turned its attention to Dunlap, who had been talked about as a potential SAM director when Smith left and before Bell was hired, but at the time he was secretary of state and unwilling to leave the high-profile job.

Then came the November election and the Republican sweep in the Legislature, and Dunlap was quickly replaced by veteran GOP politician Charlie Summers.

Dunlap was then available to take the SAM job, which he took on an interim basis, with the assumption that he would settle in full time. Dunlap said that was his expectation, too — at first. But, he eventually came to see the job as overwhelming.

“I took the job in January and, by May, I had taken exactly one day off — on Easter, when I cooked dinner.” (Dunlap was once a professional chef.)

“Now, I’m used to working seven days a week, but this got me thinking,” he said. “Do I want to be running a Maine nonprofit years down the road, or do I want to do something else?”

That he was still asking the question five months into the job, he said, “means that I’d already answered it.”

Dunlap says he’s now mulling a challenge to U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe next year, when she’s expected to seek a fourth six-year term. He said suggestions that he run were “kind of intriguing.” He expects to make up his mind over the next few months.

So Dunlap will give way to Trahan.

The two are colleagues, having served together in the Maine House of Representatives.

Dunlap said he believes Trahan will be able to put aside partisanship and work with legislators of both parties on the sporting and conservation issues that have been SAM’s mission since its inception in 1975.

He couldn’t be as sure about tax policy, Dunlap said, because Trahan’s political makeup sometimes leads him off on “ideological benders.”

One-time legislative adversary, John Piotti put it this way: “He’s a very capable legislator, and he has sometimes shown the ability to rise above politics.” But, “he’ll have to operate differently if he’s to be successful in a new role.”

* * *

Dunlap’s approach to SAM was different from Smith’s, both in terms of issues and personality. Trahan said he would continue that shift in direction, preferring consensus-building over outright battle.

For example, during the recent legislative fight over a proposed constitutional amendment to dedicate a portion of sales tax revenue to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Trahan supported the measure among his peers. Dunlap lobbied for SAM, and Smith blogged and lobbied on his own.

Dunlap and Trahan said the bill calling for the constitutional amendment came tantalizingly close to being approved for the ballot in November, which requires two-thirds votes in both the House and Senate.

The bill reached the required threshold in the Senate, but fell two votes short in the House. Renewed lobbying turned around the House tally but, during a two-week recess in mid-June, tea party activists lobbied against the measure.

When the Senate returned to session, five senators — three Republicans and two Democrats — switched their previous votes from yes to no, and the amendment failed.

Smith was incensed, and wrote letters to each of the five senators, which he posted on his website, publicly calling on them to account for their actions, and noting that they’d supported the concept on SAM’s legislative questionnaire.

He also questioned where SAM was on the issue of the vote-switching.

Dunlap said Smith’s actions were “not helpful,” and added, “It’s a very different thing to answer a questionnaire during the previous summer and then vote on an issue in June.”

He pointed out that the amendment changed significantly, too. In its original form, it would have taken a percentage of taxes from outdoor gear. The final version was a straight 1.25 percent assessment against the entire sales tax.

“We don’t believe in calling out legislators,” he said. “We may need them on the next vote, and we’re in this for the long term.”

Trahan agreed. “I would never fault a legislator who felt they had to change their mind on an issue.”

Trahan also said Inland Fisheries Commissioner Chandler Woodcock has told him that, based on the strength of legislative support, the governor is inclined to provide General Fund money himself, which Trahan said could come in the first supplemental budget Gov. Paul LePage submits.

“It may be that we’ll have a better policy than we would with the amendment,” Trahan said.

* * *

If Trahan takes the job, which he wants to do, he said he’s prepared for the challenge and will adopt Dunlap’s common-sense approach to consensus building.

“I learned how to prepare for this job from Matt Dunlap,” Trahan said. “He was seen as a pretty partisan Democrat in the House, but he always knew how to work the other side of the aisle. He was able to build trust as secretary of state because people saw it was a different job, and he did it differently. That’s what I hope to do at SAM.”

Trahan’s supporters see him as a passionate and dogged advocate for causes he believes in.

The task ahead for him at SAM will be tough.

The statewide hunting and fishing advocacy organization has an unusually small staff — an executive director and an office manager — handling a reported 14,000 membership roster and a budget that ranges from $350,000 to $400,000.

Skeptics question SAM’s membership count, wondering whether Smith counted each paying member or people within a member’s household. Trahan said a “cleanup” of SAM’s membership list is under way and a more definitive count will soon be available.

Other tasks facing SAM include working with legislators, the Governor’s Office and Inland Fisheries on a new deer plan that emphasizes preserving deer yards, controlling predators and working with landowners to revive the depleted herd in northern and eastern Maine. Though some observers say deer will never again be present in the numbers of the 1950s and ’60s, Trahan believes that a plan all stakeholders can agree on could make a difference, even in the near term.

“The (Inland Fisheries) department resumed its aerial surveys last winter, and it was a good way to identify deer yards because of the heavy snow,” he said. “We know where the deer are. Now we have to protect them.”

Doing so, Trahan acknowledges, will take money. The Legislature passed a resolve that could channel proceeds from the Land for Maine’s Future fund to deer yard protection, but first there will have to be another bond issue, which LePage opposes.

Trahan is diplomatic about it.

“The governor wants to make sure that buying land and protecting habitat will lead to more jobs and boost the economy,” Trahan said, “and I can’t disagree with that.”

He said the answer is to make sure spending from Land for Maine’s Future is more targeted to defined objectives in terms of increased tourism and attracting out-of-state hunters and fishermen. He’s optimistic that LePage will come around on the bond issue, even as early as next year.

Trahan has two key priorities for fishing, one of which is renewing the sport — and SAM membership — by attracting young people.

“Kids don’t just go outdoors naturally anymore,” he said. “There’s lots of competition from computers and TV and electronics. But we find that, once they get out there, they love it.”

Trahan also would also like Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to overhaul its hatchery system to produce many more brook trout, which he said is still Maine’s iconic fish.

“If we stock more lakes and ponds, we can relieve the pressure on the native fisheries, which is becoming intense,” he said. People will come to Maine to fish for trout, he said, if the state is willing to build populations over time.