By Michael Shepherd - July 28, 2022
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📷 Nirav Shah, director of the Maine CDC, speaks with reporters at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic in a Sanford shopping plaza on June 23, 2022. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Good morning from Augusta. There are 103 days until Maine's November elections.

What we're watching today

A revealing profile of Maine's top public health official raised the possibility of a political turn. Few in civic life here have risen to from unknown status to prominence faster than Nirav Shah. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention director's daily media briefings made him a household name early in the COVID-19 pandemic. While he has recently done Maine Public appearances and commencement speeches, the softening of the pandemic has led him back to a less ubiquitous role.

That made a profile of Shah this week from Down East magazine striking. It is a fascinating read, in part for the the accounts of those who have gotten to know him since he was hired by Gov. Janet Mills out of a Chicago law firm in 2019 to be Maine's top health official. For example, a neighbor nods to Shah's Diet Coke habit by saying he also enjoys Miller Lites at cookouts in his Brunswick neighborhood.

Shah is also exceedingly casual with his interviewer. At one point, he admits that one of the reasons why he is not doing daily briefings anymore is because it provides fewer opportunities to mess up. He jokes about the sweeping questions that he could face from the press, saying he is "always this close to the line of completely saying something that gets you fired."

"One minute you’re talking about COVID, the next minute you’re talking about condoms for kindergartners — like, that’s it," he said.

Intrigue comes in other areas. He plans to stay in Maine no matter who wins the November election between Mills and former Gov. Paul LePage. In what the interviewer called a passing remark, he raises the possibility for running for office himself, citing the desire those who have attacked him using racist terms on Twitter.

"I’m like, you know what, motherf***ers? I’m staying," he is quoted as saying.

Shah has not been an explicitly political figure to date. He was Illinois' top public health official under a former Republican governor who was ousted in the 2018 election. Just before that, the state's two Democratic U.S. senators called on him to resign over the response to a 2015 Legionnaires' disease outbreak at a state veterans home that killed 13 and sickened dozens more.

After his appointment in Maine, legislative Republicans questioned him on the incident. But others praised his early work in managing the pandemic and communicating. The Commonwealth Fund ranked Maine's COVID-19 response second among states this year behind one of the highest-performing vaccination efforts.

While elements of Mills' response have been hammered by Republicans, most notably a vaccine requirement for health care workers, Shah has not been a central player in that wrangling. But conservatives have taken note of some of his remarks in the past, including when he told The Hill in 2021 of the programs in his agency that had been "left for nothing" by the LePage administration, which ended in 2019 with 111 fewer Maine CDC workers than it had in 2011.

Would Shah be a promising candidate for office? The idea is virtually unprecedented in Maine, which prizes deep roots here in officeholders. A quick rise to prominence one field does not always translate to politics. We saw that in 2002, when the late David Flanagan tried to parlay a star turn leading Central Maine Power Co. during the 1998 ice storm into an independent gubernatorial run that quickly fizzled.

But Shah's platform and resume make him unique. It is also a different time in a hyper-polarized environment in which conventions about public officials are changing. If LePage ousts Mills in November, he would be both the first governor to serve non-consecutive terms here since the 1840s and the first person to oust an incumbent since 1966. A Mills victory would hand LePage his first-ever electoral defeat going back to his days in Waterville city government.

"People don’t really trust the buttoned-up, streamlined politician anymore," Shah's friend, author Jaed Coffin, told Down East in a comment that could have been made about Donald Trump. "Someone like Nirav, he is who he is. The way he rolls is definitely asking us to imagine what else a politician might be or expand our definitions of what a politician might be."

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News and notes

Maine's campaign finance watchdog will wrap up a probe into a conservative group later this year.

— The Maine Ethics Commission met Wednesday to discuss how it would wind down its investigation into the American Legislative Exchange Council, the subject of a complaint from a liberal group that has accused Republican candidates of not disclosing use of software that could be used to campaign.

— No evidence has emerged of that happening in Maine so far and the commission could face an expensive fight if it probes more. Commissioners are now planning to issue language on their findings that informs candidates the software would have to be reported as a donation if used to campaign, but they were still workshopping that document and said they needed more time.

Former President Donald Trump'splans to reshape the civil service could face unified resistance from Maine's congressional delegation.

— A massive change that Trump previewed late in his administration that would allow him to recategorize tens of thousands of career federal employees as political appointees who could be hired and fired is looking like a centerpiece of the Republican's agenda if he runs for president again in 2024.

— But as we told you yesterday, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she would oppose "blatant efforts to politicize the civil service." Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, both Democrats, backed their party's bid to block such a change as part of the defense budget this month. The office of Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, pointed to his work on a 2020 bill to block it.

— Trump is not the favored subject of delegation Democrats, however: "Congressman Golden is focused on working to address inflation and the effects of high oil and gas prices, provide for our national security, and protect access to VA care for rural veterans in our state," spokesperson Nick Zeller said. "He is not spending his time considering proposals from possible presidential candidates for an election that is over two years away."

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What we're reading

— An obscure court case from 2013 could have enshrined abortion rights in the Maine Constitution, a possibility that Mills said she was considering in preparing legislation on the issue if she wins re-election this year.

— The large group of towns looking to revive a Hampden waste processor will partner with a New York investment firm to buy the plant.

— A Gorham woman filed a lawsuit claiming Cumberland County jail officials revoked the security clearance she needed to work at the commissary after she reported COVID-19 policy concerns to the Maine CDC.

— The driver of a logging truck with a trailer wheel that flew off and killed a Maine state police detective in 2019 will admit responsibility and ink a plea deal after being charged with misdemeanor and civil violations.

— Dozens of businesses and trade groups are asking the state to delay the effective date of a PFAS reporting law, Maine Public reports. Rep. Lori Gramlich, D-Old Orchard Beach, who championed the law, called it an example of "unwillingness to comply."

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