AUGUSTA — The 119th Legislature handed Gov. Angus S. King the first override of his administration Friday, when lawmakers refused to sustain a veto of a bill that boosts funding for Maine’s Meals on Wheels program.

The 21-7 vote in the Senate and 107-38 vote in the House represented a major victory for the elderly who will benefit from the additional $200,000 the measure provides. For King and particularly House Republicans, the two-thirds votes reflected a clear failure to persuasively block the expansion of a program that some critics claimed would become more costly in years to come.

“I think [King] got some bad political advice and I’m very surprised he followed it,” said Betsy Sweet of the Area Agencies on Aging. “He’s a smart guy, but this one was not a smart veto. When the state is getting surplus after surplus in its revenue reports and we’re not willing to take care of our neediest citizens, eventually people get tired of it.”

Still, the override of the Meals on Wheels bill was only a marginal failure for King who saw the other 21 bills he vetoed in the past session sustained Friday by comfortable margins.

“I’m not celebrating the 21 because these were tough decisions and nobody relishes this situation,” King said. “But I did what I thought I had to do and the requisite number of legislators upheld me on all but one and the one that they didn’t, that’s fine.”

King’s record of achievement was nothing to be ashamed of according to House Speaker Steven Rowe, D-Portland.

“I’m pleased about the override, but I’m equally displeased with many of the others that were sustained,” he said.

Included in that grouping were bills that would have provided a $50-per-month raise for foster parents, $277,000 for displaced homemaker education, $200,000 for the hearing-impaired, and money for other programs affecting the poor and disabled. The governor argued the Legislature’s approval of $7.3 million in new spending exceeded his expectations by $3.8 million and promptly started vetoing the bills en masse.

“The governor was successful in having his veto sustained in all of the other bills, so there was only one — he probably didn’t expect that and didn’t see it coming,” Rowe said. “I bet he wonders what happened, especially with Republicans who failed to support him.”

Republicans in the Senate embraced the Meals on Wheels program, particularly after daylong demonstrations and skits performed by the Dirigo Alliance and other groups opposing King’s vetoes. But in the House, GOP members were in clearly in disarray with some members claiming they were betrayed by their fellow Republicans.

Determined to get all members of the GOP caucus on board to sustain the Meals on Wheels veto, House Minority Leader Thomas Murphy, Kennebunk attempted to extract commitments from the Republicans. But divisions among House Republicans were evident as the lawmakers begin to consider how they would explain a negative vote to their elderly constituents at home.

As House Republicans returned for a second afternoon caucus, the only back-room deal tactic missing from their repertoire was a heavy veil of cigar smoke. In a clear departure from the Republicans’ open caucus policy, Rep. John Buck, R-Yarmouth, asked Murphy to call for a vote to eject from the premises the only member of the press, this reporter from the Bangor Daily News. The motion was supported, although not universally, and later several Republicans admitted meeting behind closed doors on such a high-profile issue was “a mistake.”

“I can tell you that that will be the last time that ever happens,” one Republican lawmaker said later.

The vote in the House was preceded by more than an hour of debate led by House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Eliza Townsend, D-Portland. Pointing out that lawmakers could “afford what they chose to afford,” Townsend agreed with King that the Meals on Wheels program was funded under the $4.4 billion budget passed earlier this year.

“But this will extend the program to areas not currently being served and those are largely northern and rural areas,” she said.

Townsend was supported by Rep. Charles D. Fisher, D-Brewer, who didn’t mince his words about supporting Meals on Wheels.

“When I read the governor had vetoed this bill, my thought was, `Shame on him,”‘ he said.