LEWISTON – Former Sen. George Mitchell is a member of the Boston Red Sox ownership team, but he has been putting politics ahead of sports.

When the Red Sox won the World Series on Wednesday, he was watching the game from his bed in Portland. As part of the ownership team – his title is director – he could have been in St. Louis partaking in the champagne-popping celebration.

Instead, he promised Democratic Party leaders he’d stump for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in Maine.

“It was one of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make,” Mitchell said.

The morning after the Red Sox snapped their 86-year drought without a World Series championship, Mitchell was back on the campaign trail, first in Waterville and then at Bates College in Lewiston.

He will also miss Saturday’s victory parade in Boston. The campaign has asked him to speak in Iowa, where Kerry and President Bush are in a dead heat. The next time he sees Kerry, Mitchell plans to remind him of his sacrifice.

But serious consequences are at stake, he said. Maine’s 2nd Congressional District could swing the presidential election, he told students at Bates College.

But it’s not all politics on the campaign trail. Mitchell beamed after he concluded his remarks at Bates and a boy asked him to sign his baseball cap.

As a boy in Waterville, Mitchell followed the team’s stars, Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio. He said he often heard heated arguments of who was better, Williams or Dom’s brother Joe, who played for the New York Yankees.

This year, Mitchell attended the first game of the American League Championship Series in New York, which Boston lost.

He was at Fenway Park when the World Series began, with the Red Sox taking Game 1.

This team’s comeback victory over the Yankees made the postseason even sweeter, Mitchell said. He had faith in the Sox, but there was a little doubt, too.

“I’m not sure I actually believed they would win,” Mitchell said.