A Voice for the Farmers Baldacci works to harvest agricultural benefits for Maine

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Maine’s rolling farmland, pristine waters and deep woods are a long way from the granite, marble and concrete of the Longworth Building in the heart of Washington, D.C. A world away from the Metro stop on the corner and security checkpoints at each entrance of the office building. A universe away from where bags and briefcases are X-rayed and pockets are emptied and searched, and EVERYBODY – male and female – wears a suit.

But as U.S. Rep. John Baldacci, the Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District, sits in his office on the seventh floor of the Congressional Office Building, his feet are rooted firmly in Maine’s farming issues. He has surrounded himself with tokens of his agricultural mission. Scattered among the family photographs and paperwork on his desktop are a bottle of Maine maple syrup, a plastic Holstein cow, a red rubber lobster and a black cutout of a moose.

Whether dealing with fellow members of Congress or constituents who have come to the Capitol from Maine, he is the next-door neighbor swapping a story over the fence. When Maine Teacher of the Year Elaine Hendrickson of Presque Isle stopped in for a visit last month,she complained about the lack of global awareness among educators.

“But you can always check in at Dwight’s barber shop and find out what is going on,” Baldacci said.

The hometown connection was immediate: Both the teacher and her husband sat back in their seats, laughing at the shared familiarity. “You are absolutely right!” she said to Baldacci.

His grass-roots attitude is Baldacci’s trademark, and it has propelled him through 12 years on the Bangor City Council, through the Maine Legislature and on to Washington. Baldacci, who grew up in Bangor, worked in the family restaurant business and graduated from the University of Maine at Oronois the first Maine representative on the House Agriculture Committee in 35 years. The late Clifford McIntyre – Maine’s last 3rd District representative to

Congress and an Aroostook County potato farmer – served on the Agriculture Committee from the 83rd Congress in 1953 until the 88th Congress in 1965.

As the only voice for Maine – in fact, the only voice for all of New England – on the House Agriculture Committee, Baldacci is keenly aware of the importance of that role. When he first arrived in Washington almost six years ago, Baldacci realized how hard it would be just to get on the Agriculture Committee. “It is primarily controlled by the West and South, but it was so important to me that Maine’s natural resources get representation,” he said during a recent interview.

Once on the committee, Baldacci began an education campaign among his congressional colleagues. “I had to make them aware of the issues in Maine and the Northeast,” he said. “I began discussions in the committee and subcommittee about Maine’s agriculture, Maine’s blueberries, Maine’s dairy industry. We held a couple of field meetings with committee members in Augusta, in Bangor, even on the border.”

Working with other legislators to make them aware of Maine’s farming issues became a priority, and his persistence paid off.

Last year, when outgoing Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman was discussing the creation of the upcoming 2001 Farm Bill, the Northeast got attention for the first time.

“He said the next farm bill would have to be much more sensitive to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, where 200,000 farmers toil,” Baldacci said. “If we are going to have a national farm policy, it must be national in scope.”

Baldacci admits his is a small voice on a committee in which he is clearly overshadowed by Midwest and Western powers. The roster includes members from Kansas, South Dakota, California, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas – and one, Baldacci, from Maine.

That is exactly why he fought so hard to secure a coveted seat on the House Agriculture Committee when he arrived in Washington after his 1994 election, he said.

“I sought out places where I could get positive things done,” he said. “Now that I’m in my fourth term, I have a bigger voice now.”

Baldacci said the Agriculture Committee “works well. Our committee focuses on the issues and is very bipartisan. That was unusual in 1995.”

“In Maine’s 2nd District, agriculture is the No. 1 earner,” Baldacci said, his thin frame folded into one of his office chairs. Before he sought a seat on the committee, agriculture in Maine was getting little if any attentionat the national level.

“We need a seat at the table,” he insisted. “We are just beginning now to realize that we have to speak up.”

Baldacci says rural development, economic research and development, and agriculture are virtually one and the same, and Maine’s future lies with the issues faced by Maine farmers every day.

“Take for example, the city of Bangor,” he said. “Bangor is a service center, dependent on the strengths of the rest of Maine. I can work to strengthen the region around the state, strengthen natural resources, transportation, R&D, rebuild our economy.

“To do this, Maine needs a voice on agriculture issues.”

The congressman’s dual role, representing Maine and the region, is one that doesn’t go unnoticed among New England’s other agriculture officials.

“It is a pleasure just to be able to walk in to a congressman’s office and discuss an agriculture issue without having to educate him first,” New Hampshire Agriculture Commissioner Stephen H. Taylor said. “John is always up to speed on ag concerns, as well as forestry issues.

“If we lose him in Washington, we are losing a vital voice.”

Maine Agriculture Commissioner Robert Spear says he can’t think of a better way for Baldacci to serve Maine than on the Agriculture Committee.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is a most important position,” Spear said. “He is the only voice for the entire New England region for agriculture. We are in constant communication so he can best advance Maine’s position.”

Issues and answers

Some of the issues Baldacci has had to deal with during the past few years in Washington include maintaining and increasing funding for potato, blueberry, wood-utilization and agriculture research at the University of Maine. He also worked closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state officials last year to create the Maine Senior Farmshare Program, which seeks to bolster the nutritional intake of older citizens while supporting Maine farmers.

The representative also has consistently addressed agriculture trade concerns with Canada, most recently vigorously protecting Maine against a potential influx of potato wart from Prince Edward Island.There is no question that by having a voice on the Agriculture Committee, Maine’s potato farmers got a quick response when the U.S. border was shut down to prevent potato wart spread, said Baldacci.

“I began getting calls from the Maine Potato Board and farmers on the border,” he said. “Because of this quick familiarity with the issue, I informed the federal officials before the federal policy opened the borders further. We had meetings right in my office with scientists and biologists in the State Department and the [potato] industry.”

In recent months, he has been pushing the Bush administration to address concerns about unfairly priced Canadian lumber and was assured by top White House administrators, including U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick, that President Bush is playing close attention to the issue.

In his final year and a half in office before the 2002 Maine gubernatorial election – Baldacci has announced he will leave the House to run for governor – he will spearhead the effort to create and reauthorize the Northeast Dairy Compact. That program, which is not funded with tax dollars, has helped family farms stay in business by ensuring greater price stability.

“This is a controversial issue,” he said, “but it shouldn’t be. Our dairy farmers are still getting 1977 prices for their milk. The compact counters cyclical programs and flattens the curve. There are no more highs and lows. This program doesn’t take any money from taxpayers; it all comes from the milk market.”

Baldacci says that as he lobbies for renewal of the compact, he sees the Midwest states, which have fought all compacts for years, changing their outlook.

“This program works and now the Midwestern farmers want their own protection,” he said. “The same senators and representatives who for years said, ‘No compact! No compact!’ are now taking a second look and making that connection between the consumer and the farmer.”

Without programs like the compact, he said, Maine’s bountiful agri-tourism industry will suffer. “A lot of Maine dairy farms are just hanging on,” he said. “If we lose [the compact], we lose our fields, our rural vistas – the very reason many people come to Maine.”

Despite the many successes he has had in promoting Maine agriculture, Baldacci said he has one area of disappointment.

“I’ve always felt we didn’t do a good job on NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement],” he said. “The Agriculture Committee is so geared to trade policies that, although they listened carefully to our concerns, they never put a rear-view mirror in place to see what they were leaving behind.”

Baldacci said he has heard from Maine farmers that “whoever negotiated for us didn’t do a good job.” He said the trade proposal should have been more balanced.

“In the global economy, there are going to be winners and losers. We should be expeditious and be able to review and take prompt action on trade issues. The process can be so frustrating,” he said, citing the ongoing softwood lumber trade issues with Canada.

“We are now going to get a report in September and then another the first of the year,” he said. “By the time we have any meaningful action, it may be too little, too late.”

On the run

Baldacci translates his passion for Maine and its economic growth into his daily performance.

Don’t expect to eat lunch if you follow him through a day at work in Washington. Don’t expect to walk slowly, or waste a moment. Instead, expect constant action and movement and expect to watch a man intensely in tune with his constituents.

“I like being productive,” he said in an obvious understatement.

Expect to begin your day at 6 a.m. with a jog and routinely turn out the desk lamp more than 14 hours later.

As Baldacci holds court in his tiny office, 54 pictures and plaques surround him on the walls, testimony to his dedication to Maine. But if it weren’t for those vistas of Maine’s splendor, the office could be called sparse. This clearly is an office dedicated to work. The two most used items in the room are the telephone and the chair in which he sits while greeting callers.

While hosting a constant stream of Maine visitors, the congressman’s uncanny knack for remembering people and places – honed through a lifetime of politics – is evident.

When Barry Knowles of Hermon, who suffered a stroke recently, and his wife, Gladys, came to Baldacci’s Washington office as representatives of the American Heart Association, the congressman asked Knowles what he did for work before he became incapacitated. Learning that Knowles worked for the railroad, Baldacci asked, “Did you know David … ?”

“He was my boss,” Knowles answered with a laugh, and the two were off on a side trip, telling stories about joint acquaintances.

“This brings it home,” Baldacci later said. “This is why legislation is important.”

Having deep roots in Maine doesn’t mean Baldacci doesn’t realize the implications of a global economy to Maine’s agriculture producers.

“In Maine, we export all our natural resources,” he said. Drawing on his family’s experience in the restaurant business, he used the example of a 20-pound box of spaghetti to illustrate a point.

“We buy it for $11.92. After adding value – the cooking, the sauce, the service – we can make $200 to $300 on that one box of spaghetti. If that spaghetti was Maine’s resources, Maine gets the $11.92, not the $300.

“When I look at our region, we have so diminished our value-added system,” he said. “We need to draw more attention to our natural resources. This is one of the few areas where we can be good to the environment and good to the economy.”

Rushing through the labyrinth of corridors and tunnels linking the Longworth Building with the Capitol and the House voting chambers, fellow representatives greeted Baldacci warmly.

“Hello, Governor,” one said in passing, a reference to Baldacci’s plans to run for governor in 2002.

Sprinting down the hallway to a railroad subcommittee meeting that he wanted to attend in an effort to protect Maine from the possible abandonment of rail service, Baldacci dispatched aide Jay Nutting to a simultaneous agriculture meeting. Juggling a wide range of issues is the representative’s specialty.

“This is how we are in two places at once,” he said with a wink.

Baldacci not only quickly acknowledges, but he also generously credits his five aides with keeping his Washington office running efficiently. All of the aides are from Maine, and each has a specialty: agriculture, budget, health, transportation, and foreign issues.

Before the congressman dropped his duffel bag on the office floor upon returning from a recent weekend at home in Bangor, Nutting was briefing him on the agriculture issues: potato wart concerns on imports from Canada, the upcoming Farm Bill schedule, reauthorization of the Northeast Dairy Compact, agri-tourism issues.

As Nutting left the office, he immediately was replaced. Baldacci press liaison Doug Dunbar came in with two requests from reporters: a comment on the potato wart issue and information regarding the safety of paint chips from a tower in Cutler.

A third member of the team, Mike Rabasco, updated the congressman on the health of the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. Another staffer got his attention by phone. “It’s information overload down here,” joked Rabasco.

Within a half-hour of landing in his office, Baldacci got his first visitor. Toni Blake of the Maine Farm Bureau carried her organization’s concerns regarding death taxes, biotechnology and foot-and-mouth disease to her representative.

He listened carefully, not sitting at his desk but across from Blake – as he does with all visitors – and tucked back in the chair when he is listening or sitting on the edge to make a point. “What you are doing is so important to us,” Blake told him.

After their exchange, Blake, who represents 5,000 MFB members, said, “I feel like I’m preaching to the choir when I speak to John. He is very, very supportive of Maine agriculture.”

Over the next hour, Baldacci hosted five more Mainers, hearing their concerns and joking about snow on the ground in March and George Hale’s sports predictions.

Weaned on Ruby Cohen’s rolls and his mother’s spaghetti, Baldacci listened and learned at the knees of those who came to Momma Baldacci’s restaurant to gossip and talk politics. This is where he is comfortable: face-to-face with his constituents, where they call him by his first name and he knows the streets they live on and the daily issues they confront.

He isn’t distracted by the 50-foot-high ceilings, the gilded chandeliers or the velvet-draped windows of the committee rooms in which he works.

When Baldacci leaves Maine for Washington each Sunday night, he doesn’t leave his heart behind – he tries to take Maine’s with him.

“I remember my first day in Washington,” he said. “I was taking the shuttle bus from the airport and there was the Capitol, on a black sky, all lit up. I remember thinking, ‘I actually work in that building.’ It was overwhelming.”

Today, Baldacci oversees an office in Bangor, one in Lewiston and two in Aroostook County. He has a staff of eight in Washington and receives 250 e-mails a day from constituents and others.

“I represent the largest physical district east of the Mississippi,” he said. “It is resource-laden. It is vital that we move goods, get better marketing strategies, have thriving communities.

“Critical to our strength is the strength of our agriculture sector. I have visited enough plant closings and the families affected by them.

“There are opportunities out there, and we need to make an investment, not in buildings, but in our people,” Baldacci said. “One thing about Maine is we work together to move us forward.”