Nine percent.

Of all the numbers now swirling around the race to replace Olympia Snowe in the U.S. Senate, that one was foremost on former Gov. Angus King’s mind when he decided over the weekend to set his independent sights on Capitol Hill.

Nine percent as in: A nationwide poll last fall by CBS News and The New York Times showed that 9 percent of Americans, an all-time low, approved of the job Congress is doing. Or, more accurately, not doing.

“Serial killers may be below that,” mused King moments after announcing his candidacy Monday evening to a cheering crowd of 200 at Bowdoin College. “But I can’t think of anybody who’s much lower.”

Nor is anyone in Maine better positioned to benefit from it.

It’s still much too soon to predict the eventual outcome of Maine’s week-old political melodrama, which began with Snowe’s stunning announcement Feb. 28 that she’s had it with what passes these days for the federal government’s legislative branch.

Will Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree read the tea leaves sometime in the next 24 hours and decide that a secure seat in the House of Representatives is better than a three-way game of musical chairs for the Senate?

And if Pingree backs away from a battle with King, what will former Democratic Gov. John Baldacci do?

Will Secretary of State Charlie Summers emerge as the front-runner in a wide but not terribly deep field of Republicans jockeying to replace Snowe on the November ballot?

And if not Summers as the GOP’s best hope, then who? Well-liked (but not widely known) Maine Attorney General Bill Schneider?

All great theater, to be sure. And while Snowe unquestionably stole the first act last week, the second-act curtain now rises on the 67-year-old former governor who, only days ago, was home in Brunswick with his wife, Mary Herman, planning their next cross-country RV trip.

“When this whole thing broke … Mary said, ‘I’ve always wanted to live in Washington,’ ” King said. “So I think she’s up for it.”

And so, clearly, is King.

To be sure, this unexpected resurrection of King’s political career bears little resemblance to his debut in 1994 , when he won a four-way race for governor with just 35 percent of the vote.

Back then, King spent a sizable chunk of his own considerable wealth on name recognition – and on persuading people that a vote for an independent was not a waste of a perfectly good ballot.

It worked. Four years later, facing only token opposition from both major parties, King sailed to re-election with a commanding 58 percent majority.

This time is different. Much different.

Angus King, for starters, is a household name – and (unlike Congress) in a good way. A Public Policy Polling survey over the weekend of 1,256 Mainers showed King with a 62 percent favorable rating, compared with an unfavorable rating of just 24 percent.

The same poll, which had King winning a three-way race, showed favorability ratings of 47 percent for Pingree and just 22 percent for Summers.

That said, King this time around faces far more than just the usual partisan opposition here in Maine.

Snowe’s seat is suddenly under the microscopes of a national Republican Party that’s hell bent on keeping it in the red column and, at least for now, a Democratic Party that’s determined to turn it blue. By some estimates, combined expenditures on behalf of the two major-party candidates could run to $20 million or more.

So, apart from the TV stations and other sellers of political advertising, who benefits from King further complicating this inevitable showdown?

All of Maine does, that’s who.

King’s entry into the race offers at least a partial diversion from what still looms as a political bloodbath of the highest order. Had this remained a two-way affair, the entire Senate election would have dissolved into a tsunami of major-party attack ads that have everything to do with winning and, alas, little to do with governing.

Yet in King, Maine now has an instant front-runner who pledged out of the gate Monday that he is “not running against anyone” and thus will engage in no negative advertising whatsoever. The promise, it’s worth noting, earned him sustained applause.

And assuming King actually gets elected come Nov. 6, Maine would get a senator who goes to Washington tethered not to this majority or that minority, but only to, as he put it, “the people of Maine. And I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

Some see that as the way life should be. But lofty as it may sound, might it in reality be a one-way ticket to irrelevancy?

“I will be a U.S. senator. They’ve got to give me an office, (although) it may be near a broom closet,” countered King. “And I get a vote. And votes are important down there. That’s the currency.”

What’s more, argues King, the entire country is fast running out of options. The catalyst that ultimately reignited his political ambition, he noted, is the very dysfunction that drove Snowe to walk away in the first place.

“Frankly, I think I might scare them,” King told the crowd Monday evening. “And that would be a good thing. Because Maine would be sending a message that if they don’t get their act together, other states and other communities are going to be sending more people like me. That would be their worst nightmare.”

More applause.

The details are, to be kind, still being worked out. King joked Tuesday that his campaign headquarters is his iPhone and his fundraising plan for now goes no further than his hope that he won’t have to spend any of his own money.

But to appreciate what’s prompting King to run – and what well might land him on Capitol Hill before this thing is over – consider the $25 check he got late last week from Jason Briggs, a vice president of VIP Tour and Charter Bus Co. in Portland.

It happened at a fundraiser for the nonprofit Camp Laughing Loon in East Waterboro, to which King donated a copy of his recent travel memoir, “Governor’s Travels: How I Left Politics, Learned to Back Up a Bus, and Found America.”

“He was a great governor and he’s a people person and he’s likable,” explained Briggs, a well-connected Republican with at least five friends now eyeing the Senate race. “That was just my way of thanking him.”

Still, we’re talking about Washington, D.C., here – not Augusta. Does Briggs recall that poll last fall that, for the first time ever, drove Congress’ approval rating into the single digits?

“Yes, I do remember that,” he replied.

Was he surprised?

“No,” he said. “People are tired. People are fed up. If we argued and disagreed as much where we work, in the jobs that we do, we’d get absolutely nothing done.”

And he honestly believes that Angus King, swimming solo against the partisan tide, can change that?

“I don’t know what anybody can do right now,” Briggs conceded. “But I think he’d make a great senator for Maine.”

A “great” U.S. senator.

When was the last time someone said that?

 

Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at: bnemitz@mainetoday.com

 

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