Paper Production

If a noted Maine leader dies, a natural disaster strikes Central America or a town gets a grant for a fire truck, a question you don’t need to bother asking is, What do Maine’s senators think of this turn of events? The Senate press offices, to an unusual degree, already have it covered. (In these cases, they would be saddened, deeply concerned and delighted.)

A recent National Journal story, which tallied press releases between Jan. 1 and July 31 that subsequently appeared on a senator’s Web site, noted the 100-member body generated 13,069 press statements during that time. Sen. Olympia Snowe ranked third in pro-duction, with 428 releases; Sen. Susan Collins was fifth with 329 releases. As a delegation, Maine was bested only by New York’s Sens. Hillary Clinton (435), who may be preparing a run for the presidency, and Charles Schumer (281), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

New York also has 19 million residents, world-class media outlets and a political intensity that Maine eschews. What explains this unusual production of press announcements on the monumental and mundane?

An expectation that Maine will hear from its elected officials often may be one explanation. Another is that both senators are especially active – Sen. Collins is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has a wide purview. Sen. Snowe is a member of both the finance and intelligence committees, and has found herself in the middle of some difficult political battles recently. But this doesn’t answer the question of the numerous small-grant awards and assorted incremental achievements.

Those might be explained by another theory, that the press releases keep coming because they keep finding their way into Maine’s print and electronic media – the lowness of the news terrain giving the press statements stature they otherwise would not have.

But perhaps the fact that there is interest and ink for them is a good sign, an indication that things could be considerably worse, and Maine might brace for harder times if the barometer of press releases were to drop perilously.