Spokesman Umphrey has roots in northern Maine, ties to Washington, D.C.

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AUGUSTA – A visitor who walks into Lee Umphrey’s State House office can’t miss the large picture behind his desk, showing a potato-harvesting scene from a northern Maine farm from perhaps a century ago.

The color image of harvesters, horse-drawn wagons and wooden barrels, and a smaller sepia-toned print of the old Umphrey homestead tacked next to it, make visual references to the Maine roots of Gov. John Baldacci’s spokesman.

The other walls in Umphrey’s office tell more recent stories. One wall is decorated with framed editorial cartoons illustrating events in Baldacci’s tumultuous first year in office. On another wall is a small cuckoo clock.

“What a ride,” Umphrey said of his first year as Baldacci’s director of communications. “The problems here were far worse than any of us had anticipated.”

On the night of his inauguration, Baldacci dealt with the shutdown of Great Northern paper mills that had employed hundreds. Less than a week after he was in office, a rally by a few dozen white supremacists drew more than 4,000 activists to Lewiston for an anti-racism show of strength.

The governor confronted a $1 billion budget shortfall, then pushed through a universal health care bill. More recently, towns flooded after record snowfalls and heavy rain, and Baldacci’s SUV crashed on a slushy highway. Now, he’s struggling to maintain a no-tax pledge and still come up with $160 million in new revenue or savings.

“He was riding shotgun as we were going through those experiences,” said Baldacci. “He’s part of the team, he’s part of the effort. He’s a valued member of the team.”

With everything that has been going on, Umphrey is usually the first to feel the heat and field questions from the news media for his Democratic boss. But the 45-year-old spokesman says he’s well-prepared for the challenge by experience.

The Umphreys came from New Brunswick to Maine in the 1850s. His grandfather Milford owned a farm in the Aroostook County town of Washburn, but later decided to move to someplace with a more agreeable climate.

“He always said it was too damn cold and he didn’t want to be a potato farmer,” said his grandson, recalling the blunt phrasing. “That’s where I get it from.”

The family relocated to Rhode Island – ironically, the state the Baldacci clan left to come to Maine – and Lee Umphrey grew up in Cranston. But Umphrey kept his Maine connection alive as he returned once or twice every year to visit the old family farm and fish in northern Maine’s backcountry.

While at Iowa Wesleyan College, Umphrey got his first taste of politics in 1980 as a volunteer in Sen. Edward Kennedy’s presidential campaign. The Massachusetts senator lost the Democratic nomination to President Jimmy Carter, but Umphrey developed contacts that brought him to Washington after his graduation in 1981.

For four years, he worked in the Congressional Research Office of the Library of Congress, taking on rigorous research assignments on wildly varied topics.

“The Library of Congress was probably the best training I could have had for getting the right information and getting it to the right people,” said Umphrey.

His next job, working for Sen. Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island from 1984 to 1989, taught more about the art of politics. Umphrey was the first Pell Grant recipient to work in the office of the senator for whom the grants for low-income students are named.

Umphrey became involved in constituent services and was liaison to committees chaired by Pell: Foreign Relations and Education. Umphrey delved into issues from Amtrak to the nuclear weapons freeze, while learning Pell’s lesson that getting things done was better than getting credit.

“His motto was ‘Always let the other man have my way,'” said Umphrey, who has tried to foster that philosophy in his present job. “More than anybody, he’s made a mark on me careerwise on how to get things done and how to treat people.”

After his stint in Washington, Umphrey returned to New England and joined the Bangor-based Training and Development Corp., which trains displaced workers and runs summer youth programs, among other activities.

It was through the nonprofit agency that Umphrey got to know Baldacci, a former state senator who was elected to his first of four congressional terms in 1994. Umphrey, who considers Baldacci his friend, also became acquainted with Baldacci’s family.

He became closely acquainted with Maine’s media working as a political advocate and consultant to the Maine Newspaper Group, an advertising consortium of Maine’s seven daily newspapers. In 1999, he went to work for the city of Bangor, where he was involved in waterfront and airport development projects.

He went to work for Baldacci’s gubernatorial campaign in 2002 and, as a transition team member after the election, he rode daily for weeks between Bangor and Augusta with the governor-elect.

During the numerous hours of commuting, the two discussed the structure the new administration would take, carving out Umphrey’s place as more than a mouthpiece for Baldacci.

Umphrey attends budget meetings and sits in on discussions of other breaking issues, such as the paper mill shutdowns, said Baldacci, adding that he has full confidence in Umphrey.

His pronouncements and statements have not always gone smoothly.

After describing those in a gathering protesting gay marriage outside the State House as “cuckoo clocks,” the Christian Civic League responded with mocking sarcasm.

It presented the governor with a handcrafted cuckoo clock “in keeping with the professional character and attitude of your office as reflected by your spokesman’s remarks.” Umphrey issued a tame apology, and the gift cuckoo clock hangs on his wall.

Christian Potholm, a political science professor at Bowdoin College, said Umphrey handled the affair “with skill and dispatch” and that overall, he finds Umphrey to be credible and reliable.

“Imagine,” said Potholm, “having to follow the spinning talent of Dennis Bailey,” former Gov. Angus King’s spokesman.

Later, things got hot when his explanation of the governor’s stand on taxes was interpreted differently from the governor’s.

The job has become more challenging because of the speed with which information travels over the Internet, said Dave Cheever, who was Gov. Joseph Brennan’s press secretary from 1981 to 1986.

It means a spokesman now might have to respond to material that’s not yet in print, and whose source may not yet be clear.

“In the electronic age,” said Cheever, “you have to be pretty nimble.”