MECHANIC FALLS — After taking a jab at what Congress is accomplishing in Washington — nothing — U.S. Sen. Angus King talked about rural economic development at the Oxford Hills Chamber of Commerce’s 40th Annual Awards Banquet on Thursday night.

Maine’s independent senator was the keynote speaker before roughly 250 people at The Silver Spur.

After telling a number of Maine-themed stories, King opened his speech with: “A quick update of what we’re accomplishing in Washington.” He looked down and said nothing.

The audience exploded in laughter.

“Sorry; I couldn’t resist,” he said with a laugh. 

Part of the problem is lawmakers no longer know each other because many travel home to their families in their home states every weekend, the senator said. King started his own project of getting to know his colleagues by having dinner at Kenny’s Smoke House without staff or news media present.

He said he is “decent friends” with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, even if they “don’t agree on a lot.” During one of the dinners, Cruz asked if he could go upstairs to make a call.

“Every night at 8 o’clock, wherever he is, he calls his kids,” King said. “That is something about Ted Cruz you don’t learn on CNN.” King said he is making “the human connection” through his project. 

When it comes to fueling economic development, states must first take inventory of their assets, he said. For Maine, these include “creative, energetic, entrepreneurial people,” fiber and trees, the Gulf of Maine, recreation, the University of Maine system and community colleges and the three-ring binder, which is the “middle-mile broadband fiber network that runs throughout Maine.”

For the latter, King noted developing broadband in rural Maine is essential to developing the economy.

“We’ve got to be able to connect into Norway, South Paris or Bethel or Milo or Presque Isle,” he said. “We have to be thinking of new ways to do this.”

He has one staff member dedicated to developing broadband, he said. “You cannot build a business in a community without broadband — you can’t even keep people living there.”

King said he didn’t have to tell the people from Bethel the importance of recreation, noting it’s the largest industry in Maine, supporting 100,000 jobs.

“We are the largest open space east of the Mississippi and people like to come here,” he said. “Whether it’s the coast or the mountains or the lakes, recreation is what we have.”

“We have to make our seasons longer,” he continued to laughter from the audience. “It sounds funny. It used to be our season was Memorial Day to Labor Day, but Columbus Day weekend is one of the hottest or second-hottest weekends of the year. We’ve got all this infrastructure — restaurants, hotels — we’ve got to fill them up most of the year.”

He shared a story about what he called a “stumble-upon,” a thing you don’t anticipate and can’t plan for, but which becomes an opportunity. King met a wealthy man who planned to move his business to Maine. The senator asked why the man planned to move to Maine, romanticizing that it was the state’s weather or scenery, but it turned out to be something much different.

The man told King: “’My wife and I both ride Harleys and Maine doesn’t have a helmet law.’”

“Whoever thought a helmet law would be an economic (booster)?” asked King, who also enjoys riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle around the Pine Tree State.

The senator noted he’s been working for economic development in Maine for many years and there are two essential elements needed to be successful: local leadership and positive attitudes.

Some areas of Maine are doing well economically — more than you would think because of their lack of assets — and that’s because of “energetic people who make it happen; energetic people like John (Williams),” King said of the chamber’s executive director.

King ended his speech by quoting Winston Churchill.

“Winston Churchill said, ‘Success consists of going to failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ We’re not going to lose our enthusiasm and we’re especially not going to lose it in Oxford County.”

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