BANGOR – An exhausted-looking John Baldacci stood before a crowd of area businesspeople Thursday morning and admitted that it finally has sunk in – as the newly elected governor, he has a lot of work to do to fix the state’s budget shortfall, estimated at as much as $1 billion through June 2005.

Baldacci used a Husson College podium Thursday to thank an audience of hometown supporters for their efforts in his successful gubernatorial race and to reiterate the economic development ideas that helped him become the top vote-getter on Election Day.

But he also acknowledged that there’s a significant difference between talking about how to fix the budget problems during the campaign and now actually having to do it.

“It’s an overwhelming feeling to have campaigned for the office and then to have all these challenges,” said Baldacci, while asking the businesspeople for their help.

“One person can’t do it by [himself],” Baldacci said about the deficit. “It takes a team of people. … Collectively, the brain power in this room can come up with strategies to do this.”

During a question and answer period, some of the more than 200 people in attendance wanted to remind Baldacci that even though he may be moving into the governor’s mansion in Augusta, he still hails from an area of the state that is suffering from out-migrations of people and shutdowns of manufacturing plants.

Former state representative Kay Lebowitz told the Bangor native that when he is in Augusta he needs to “exploit” the economic difficulties experienced in northern Maine.

“I know you and Karen are going to move down there [to Augusta], but don’t forget us up here,” she said.

After Lebowitz’s advice, the governor-elect was asked for specifics on how he would erase the line of economic disparity between northern and southern Maine.

Baldacci said he wants to come up with a “balanced economic strategy” for the state that includes two separate economic development policies, one for rural Maine and one for urban Maine, because each separately faces critical business issues the other does not.

“You can’t have an economic plan coming out of Augusta that’s one-size-fits-all,” said Baldacci before quickly reciting a shopping list of business improvement ideas for the area. He said he believes the state’s natural resources could be used more creatively by value-added companies, that he encourages the development of business enterprise zones in parts of the state that are hurting the most, and that he envisions more traffic in and out of the state’s ports.

Baldacci was lighthearted during most of the early morning event. He joked that while he was away in Congress during the last eight years, his 11-year-old son, Jack, became a New York Yankees fan instead of a Boston Red Sox fan because he lacked “parental supervision.”

That, he said, would change and he would be taking his son to more ballgames in Boston.

When asked by an audience member whether he could name any of his cabinet appointees, Baldacci replied, “I made two appointments this morning, and they’ve offered to work for me. That’s my wife, Karen, and my son, Jack.”

Baldacci jokingly said he’s already prepared for one of the quirks that come with the job – the hanging of his photograph at Governor’s restaurants statewide. Baldacci’s family owns Momma Baldacci’s Italian restaurant about a half-mile away from Governor’s in Bangor.

The governor-elect said he’s talked with the owner of the Governor’s chain, “and he assured me that if he puts my photo in his restaurant that he’d put under it that you can eat down the road at my family’s restaurant.”