Sen. Snowe has full plate in St. Paul

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MINNEAPOLIS – This is Sen. Olympia Snowe’s ninth Republican National Convention, and as Maine’s senior senator, an articulate supporter of Sen. John McCain and one of the leading GOP moderates in the Senate, she is highly in demand.

Her schedule has included a dizzying round of luncheons honoring people such as former Sen. Bob Dole and potential first lady Cindy McCain, media interviews, meetings with the Maine delegation, receptions for groups she supports, and, of course, going to the convention floor at the Xcel Energy Center every night.

She arrived in Minneapolis-St. Paul on Tuesday evening and was stuck in traffic for more than an hour trying to get through a knot of anti-war protesters and into the convention hall. That night after Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s speech in support of McCain she gave several television interviews and wasn’t able to head back to her hotel in Minneapolis until almost midnight.

The only convention she said she has skipped since 1972 was in 1980 when she was running for re-election after her first term in the U.S. House of Representatives and she decided to stay home and campaign. “Your first re-election is often the hardest race,” she said.

In a long and distinguished political career, Snowe has been responsible for a number of firsts. In 1978, at age 31, she was the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the House of Representatives. She is also the first woman to have served in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of the U.S. Congress as well as the first Greek-American congresswoman.

With her 1989 marriage to former Maine Gov. John R. “Jock” McKernan, who also is attending the convention, she became the first person to be simultaneously a member of Congress and first lady of a state.

In 35 years as an elected official she has never lost an election. She has high approval ratings in Maine and a strong sense of what she thinks the voters want and expect from her. That sense has served her well as she has navigated the tricky shoals of being one of the few pro-choice, moderate Republicans in Congress, a group that grows smaller with each passing election cycle.

Snowe has served both in the minority and majority in Congress and says it doesn’t really affect how she goes about doing her job.

“When I was in the House I didn’t accept the minority status. I didn’t let that interfere with my chance to get things done. I never allowed myself to be defined by being in the minority,” she said.

Like Sen. McCain, she often has reached across the aisle to work with Democrats to create legislation or try to solve a problem.

But she admits that when the Republicans won control of both the House and Senate in 1994, the year she was elected to the Senate, it was pretty nice being in charge.

“We shouldn’t have lost the majority,” she said of the Republicans.

Maine is a “politically diverse” state with a strong group of independent voters, and you have to learn how to build consensus, she said. That’s a big reason she has always supported McCain.

“He is independent. He’s an independent maverick and an independent spirit. With him it’s all about getting to the heart of a problem and solving it. He’s not driven by ideology but ideas and solutions,” said Snowe.

For that very reason, McCain hasn’t always been popular with the national Republican establishment. “It’s so refreshing to have a nominee who’s made that part of his political frame of reference,” said Snowe.

When he announced that he planned to run for president a second time, Snowe said, he came to seek her support. “I said, ‘Absolutely, without question.'”

She said she has known him for 25 years, both as a colleague and committee chairman. “I believed in John because of seeing how he functions.

“He’s what the country needs. … He knows how to bring people together.”

Last summer when all the pundits and pollsters were counting McCain out and touting the candidacies of Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, and the McCain campaign started to sputter and run out of money, Snowe offered him some advice.

“I saw him on the floor [of the Senate] and I said, ‘Don’t let that stop you. Go to New Hampshire and stay there,'” she recalled. “I felt he would be so in sync with the people of New Hampshire.

“He needed to go out and be who he was and get back to the basics,” she said.

Whether the issue is climate change or campaign finance reform, like Snowe, McCain has shown himself willing to work with Democrats to address tough issues.

“That’s what you want out of a leader. That’s a problem-solver. We’ve gotten away from the notion of consensus-building,” said Snowe.

Because of that, McCain was not completely trusted by the GOP’s conservative wing, which appears to be thrilled with his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Snowe said because “people don’t know” Palin and “she has a different level of experience from what people expected,” her speech Wednesday night was an important “introduction to the American people.”

“It was the beginning of the public’s vetting process for her,” said Snowe.

“There’s going to be a heightened level of curiosity about who she is, what makes her tick. It does bring a certain level of pressure,” Snowe said.

A presidential campaign can be challenging and pressure-filled for the most seasoned of political hands, and there is no room to make mistakes, said Snowe.

For someone like Palin who has never been on the national stage before, Snowe said, “it’s a different level of exposure and scrutiny.”

Palin has relatively little governing experience, especially in the areas of national security and international affairs, and was chosen in what appeared to be an abbreviated selection process.

However, Snowe said McCain obviously felt Palin was the right choice. “He had to have given it significant thought. … This was the individual that worked for him.”

Snowe said, “Time will tell” how Palin performs on the campaign trail. “There’s always a level of risk with any selection.”

Echoing words that sound a bit like former President Clinton’s comments about Sen. Barack Obama’s preparedness to be president, Snowe said what’s really important is judgment in a leader. “You can never be fully prepared. … You don’t know how someone is going to react.”