Campaign worker John Martin fills balloons this morning in anticipation of the formal opening of U.S. Senate candidate Angus King’s campaign headquar ters on Maine Street in Brunswick. (Darren Fishell / The Times Record)
The offices, located next to the Bank of Maine in the former Brunswick House of Pizza building, will be the nexus for King’s campaign.
Crystal Canney, King’s communications director, said that the unenrolled candidate will open campaign offices in other parts of the state, but that Brunswick, where King resides, will remain the headquarters.
This morning, King was introduced by campaign videographer Tyler Dunham, marketing director for the Brunswick restaurant Little Tokyo, and Eleanor “Lollie” Brown, who served as King’s director of constituent services during his first term as governor, which started in 1994.
At the Maine Street campaign office on Friday afternoon, Brown said she thinks King, who is running as an independent, can “make a difference in this gridlock in Washington (D.C.).”
“It’s not going to be easy in any respect, but I think that that’s where he’s good. He did it in Augusta,” Brown said. “Washington is a far cry from Augusta, but I’m convinced that he can do it.”
On Friday evening, King echoed that sentiment in an interview on CNN, commenting on Sen. Olympia Snowe’s decision not to run for re-election out of disappointment with partisan politics in Washington.
“The way she left the job is what really provoked me to run,” King said in that interview. “Here is a senator with over 30 years of experience and seniority and great work ethic and integrity and she said she can’t get anything done.”
King, who served two terms as Maine’s governor from 1995 to 2003, narrowly won his first gubernatorial victory in 1994, but then earned 59 percent of the vote in his 1998 reelection bid.
In March, King announced his candidacy for the Senate race following a lecture at Bowdoin College.
Earlier this month, a poll of 993 registered Maine voters released by the Maine People’s Resource Center — affiliated with the Portland-based Maine People’s Alliance — showed King in front of Republican candidate Charlie Summers and Democratic candidate Matt Dunlap, with King taking 56 percent of the vote.
However, Democratic Party candidate Cynthia Dill emerged in that poll as the top choice in a Democratic primary with 20.2 percent of the vote to Dunlap’s 16.7 percent.
The poll did not test voters preference in a matchup between King, Summers and Dill.
Democrats and Republicans will choose from multiple contenders during a June 12 primary to nominate their parties’ U.S. Senate candidates.
Andrew Ian Dodge of Harpswell, who left the Republican Party as a result of dissatisfaction with the way party officials managed the February caucuses, also has announced plans to run as an independent.
dfishell@timesrecord.com
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