We are not sure if this a first for a U.S. senator, but it certainly has got to be a first from a topical standpoint.

On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, joined in an online video conversation with key staff of the Shipyard Brewing Co. via the networking service Skype.

During the session, King spoke with Shipyard President Fred Forsley and the company’s sales and marketing director, Bruce Forsley.

King congratulated the Forsleys on Shipyard’s growth and its growing popularity among beer brands nationwide.

“The reality is beer at a world-class level is what Maine brewers are about,” Fred Forsley tells King during the two-minute discussion. “That’s something we want everybody in Washington to understand. Right now, Bud, Miller, Coors are owned by foreign companies, and today Maine has some of the best beer in the world brewed by some of the best brewers in the world, and I’m proud to be a part of it.”

On Friday, a quick note to King’s communications team in Washington to remind them that Baxter Brewing in Lewiston had also just announced a substantial expansion and a doubling of its workforce got a kind and quick response from Scott Ogden, King’s press secretary.

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“Companies like Baxter and Shipyard are emblematic of our state’s hard work and our commitment to delivering the best, and those qualities seem to be the driving force behind their continued success,” Ogden wrote.

“One of the senator’s top priorities is to stay in contact with constituents and various organizations back home while he’s in Washington. He’s really looking forward to using Skype to help him do that, so yesterday was surely the first of many to come over the course of the next six years,” he wrote.

You can see the video of King’s conversation on YouTube. Go to  http://youtu.be/xIvXHxE8dAM

– Scott Thistle


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