Wathen felt like ‘a fish out of water’ Jurist explains end to candidacy

AUGUSTA – After only 54 days on the campaign trail, former Chief Justice Daniel Wathen withdrew his bid Monday for the Republican nomination for governor.

During a brief and curt exchange with reporters who had gathered at his home in Augusta, Wathen said he simply had no idea that running for public office as a partisan candidate would be so demanding.

“Politics is a different life than anything I’ve ever experienced,” he said. “I don’t have what it takes to be cut out to be a politician. It was obvious to me and obvious to anyone who knew me that when I was campaigning, I was like a fish out of water.”

Insulated from public scrutiny as a member of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court for 20 years, Wathen suddenly found himself under fire as a candidate almost from the moment he retired from the court on Oct. 3 to run for governor. At that time he declined to respond to reporters’ inquiries about his positions on controversial issues such as abortion and gay rights. During those initial press conferences, Wathen could barely conceal his discomfort over the suggestion that he was somehow obligated to answer questions from a probing press corps.

“I am simply not cut out to be a politician,” Wathen said Monday in a prepared statement. “I continue to think and act like a judge. The harder I try to change, the less authentic and uncomfortable I become.”

Wathen had been preparing for a June primary contest with former state Rep. Peter Cianchette of South Portland and former state Sen. Jim Libby of Buxton. He had not decided Monday which of his former primary opponents he will support, but promised to back the party’s nominee for the November 2002 election.

The 62-year-old Easton native said he had no plans for his immediate future, but hoped to remain involved in public policy discussions on issues such as domestic violence, child abuse and legal services for poor Maine families.

“I’ll find something else to do,” he said. “I don’t regret leaving the court. I had been there long enough. And it was time for a change.”

Wathen had paid for polls that reportedly placed him as the strongest gubernatorial candidate after Democratic U.S. Rep. John Baldacci of Bangor. The retired jurist said campaign fund raising also was not a determining factor. He said he had raised about $50,000 to date, the unspent balance of which will be returned to the contributors.

Instead, Wathen’s decision to leave the race focused more on the expectations of Republican primary voters who he said wanted him to take positions on issues that could place him in conflict with his own ethical standards. He did not identify which issues were of concern to him.

“My decision to become a partisan candidate has taken an unexpectedly high toll on me personally and has jeopardized my own sense of integrity as well as my health,” he said. “To prolong the effort further would serve no purpose.”

Wathen, who lost 25 pounds while campaigning, said his health was not a “real serious problem” but an indication that “I was not meant to be doing what I was doing.”

George Campbell, a former Old Town city manager and Portland mayor, could relate to Wathen’s doubts about remaining in a partisan primary. Now a consultant with Pierce-Atwood Consulting of Portland, Campbell pulled out of a Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District after a five-month campaign in 1995 that was won by Rep. Tom Allen.

“His statement is so quintessential Dan Wathen,” Campbell said. “A partisan primary is run by the committees with candidates expected to do day-in and day-out glad-handing. If you haven’t laid down your credentials as to whether you’re a moderate, conservative or whatever else, you don’t have time during the primary to do it. My decisions to withdraw were totally different than Dan’s, but I did learn that in a primary, you define yourself first as to who you are as a partisan.”

Wathen initially considered running as an independent and never did weigh in on conservative GOP issues such as a proposed ban on late-term, or partial-birth, abortions. Some election watchers said Monday that the judge’s reluctance to be cast in a particular ideology left him feeling out of control of his own candidacy – a difficult place for a man who has spent a career on the bench resisting manipulation.

The demise of Wathen’s candidacy now leaves only Libby and Cianchette in contention for the GOP nomination. Second District Rep. Baldacci remains the lone gubernatorial candidate for the Democrats. Former Central Maine Power chief David Flanagan of Manchester is making an independent bid, and the Green Party may have its own primary with at least two candidates – Jonathan Carter of Lexington Township and Steven Farsaci of Farmington.

Both of Wathen’s former opponents credited Wathen with raising the visibility and focus of the GOP primary. Libby and Cianchette expressed hope that Wathen would continue to be involved in public policy in the years ahead.