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Kevin Raye and a pair of campaign aides walk down Water Street in Castine for the second time.
The Republican candidate – one of four GOP hopefuls for the open 2nd Congressional District seat – is covering the same ground for the benefit of a weekly newspaper’s photographer whose camera hadn’t been working quite right.
With a chuckle, Raye and his small entourage turn around a final time at the newspaperman’s request and head back down the street.
This time, the camera clicks and Raye’s campaign stop in the Hancock County town is duly preserved for the local press.
A longtime aide to Republican U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, Raye is a seasoned veteran of such small-town politicking.
In an interview that day, Raye said that having served as chief of staff for Maine’s senior senator in her Washington, D.C., office for six years, he also knows the more hectic pace of Capitol Hill and what it takes to get things done there.
“Of everyone running for the office, I’ve had the opportunity to build on relationships and establish some credibility with a number of members of Congress,” said Raye, whose “Ready on Day One” slogan adorns nearly every piece of campaign literature used for this, his first run for a federal office.
Beyond his experience and close ties to Snowe, however, Raye, 41, said, people still “want to know who I am.”During his recent swing through Hancock County, Raye stressed his ties to Eastport, his hometown.
“A Down Eastah, huh?” one rather surprised man asked when Raye shook his hand inside the cavernous Castine Town Hall.
Now living in the small town of Perry, population 847, Raye would be the first from Washington County to represent the state in the U.S. House since 1867, when Calais attorney Fred Pike represented what was then the 5th Congressional District.
A “product of rural Maine,” Raye was one of eight boys and took to politics early, as a child sitting with his grandmother in her car outside the Eastport Town Hall while she took exit polls for the local Republicans.
He was 15 when he read then newly elected state Sen. Snowe’s op-ed piece in the Maine Sunday Telegram criticizing Gov. James Longley’s plan to close down the Bangor Mental Health Institute.
Raye fired off a five-page hand-written letter to Snowe congratulating her for her stand.
Two years later, Snowe hand-picked the then 17-year-old Raye to head her congressional effort in Washington County, where Raye – still too young to vote – began knocking on doors and handing out fliers for the virtually unknown candidate.
As a birthday gift to friends who turned 18, Raye would take them to the Town Hall to register to vote – as Republicans, of course.
After attending Bates College with the help of scholarships and loans, Raye worked in Snowe’s Bangor office as a field representative for 11 years before heading to Washington to oversee Snowe’s staff.
If returned to the nation’s capital, Raye said, he would work to bring more employment opportunities to the struggling district.
“For me, jobs is job number one,” Raye told delegates at the Maine Republican State Convention, where his supporters, clad in yellow and royal-blue T-shirts, crowded the stage.
Raye said his top priority in education is to push for full funding of the government’s share of special education costs to help communities free up local dollars for other activities.
“Right now, Maine is being shortchanged to the tune of $70 million a year,” he said. “I will advocate, agitate, cajole and – if necessary – shame Congress into fulfilling that promise.”
Analysts are looking for a close race between Raye and former Bangor Mayor Tim Woodcock who, like Raye, boasts some Capitol Hill experience as an aide to then U.S. Sen. William Cohen.
“[Raye] has not promoted himself. He’s that laid-back kind of nice guy who decided, ‘Well, I’ve done this for a long time,’ and with this opportunity he decided to try his own hand,” said Douglas Hodgkin, a political science professor and Raye supporter who has known the candidate since he was a student at Bates.
But after years of working for Maine’s senior senator, Raye – who at the last campaign finance reporting period had the most cash on hand among the candidates on either ticket – said it’s his turn.
“I am somebody who has always believed that one individual can make a difference,” Raye said. “And when all is said and done, I want to have made a difference.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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