Portland Press Herald - Michael Brennan Sets Himself Apart With a Tone of Collaboration

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Portland Press Herald - Michael Brennan Sets Himself Apart With a Tone of Collaboration

On the campaign trail, Michael Brennan sometimes states that today's young adults will have an average of three to five different careers before their working lives end.

At age 55, Brennan speaks as someone who should know.

Since graduating from college in the 1970s, he's been an anti-nuclear activist, a social worker, an affordable housing developer, a lobbyist for a major charity, an educator and a state lawmaker.

Now the Portland Democrat hopes to add yet another line to his resume: congressman.

Brennan is one of six Democrats and two Republicans running in the June 10 primary election for the chance to succeed outgoing Rep. Tom Allen in Maine's 1st Congressional District. Allen, a Democrat, is stepping down to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

The winners of the Democratic and Republican primaries will face each other in the Nov. 4 general election.

On many of the issues, including health care and the Iraq war, Brennan may have a difficult time contrasting himself with three better-financed opponents: Chellie Pingree, Ethan Strimling and Mark Lawrence.

All four of them made their names in Augusta, where they all established liberal voting records.

But political style is a separate matter, and it is one area in which Brennan is seeking to distinguish himself from the Democratic pack. While some of his opponents have tried to appeal to progressive voters by bashing the Bush administration, Brennan is offering a message of unity in service of a decidedly liberal agenda.

"I've been able to have both Democrats and Republicans come to agreement on how to move forward - and not come to agreement in ways that are meaningless compromise - but to come together in ways that make substantive change in policy," Brennan said in a recent interview.

RETURNED TO MAINE IN '70s

Although Brennan was born in Portland, he spent much of his childhood in the South. He graduated from Florida State University, where he wrote editorials for the student newspaper, before returning to Maine in the 1970s.

In his mid-20s, Brennan went to work for the Campaign for Safe Energy, an effort to make candidates in the 1980 presidential race address questions about potential safety problems with nuclear energy.

Ken Ward, who worked on the anti-nuclear campaign and has gone on to a career in environmental activism, said Brennan has a natural flair for team-building.

"In the midst of a crazy campaign, he's like a glue," Ward said. "He's both able to be opinionated and to get stuff done, but to do it in a way that brings people together and is energizing and fun."

After stints as a community organizer, an administrator and lobbyist for the United Way and as the head of a trust fund that paid for affordable housing projects in Cumberland County, Brennan went to graduate school in 1992 to become a social worker.

During his time as a social work student at the University of New England, Brennan was elected to the Maine Legislature.

Over the next several years, he pursued both careers.

As a social worker, Brennan has done therapy for adolescents who have substance-abuse problems and are in the criminal justice system. He's also worked with high school athletes who are coping with eating disorders and performance anxiety.

Brennan said he believes his background as a social worker has helped him in the political arena. He explained that both politics and social work require a focus on building relationships, listening skills, consensus-building and the ability to work in groups.

KNOWN FOR BUILDING CONSENSUS

During his 12-plus years in Augusta, Brennan said that he helped forge numerous bipartisan alliances, ticking off a list of committees he chaired and describing how they reach consensus on tough issues.

"There was not a more contentious issue in the State House in 2003 than health care reform, and yet every Democrat on the committee and every Republican on the committee voted for Dirigo Health," he said.

Former Sen. Paul Davis, a Sangerville Republican who was the chamber's minority leader while Brennan was majority leader, described his Democratic counterpart as pragmatic and politically agile.

Davis recalled Brennan's reaction to a GOP threat to hold a statewide referendum to block a Democratic-backed borrowing measure.

"He blinked his eyes just once and said, 'We're backing off from this,' " Davis recalled.

Davis said he and Brennan became good friends even though they rarely agreed on the issues. Brennan used to stop by Davis' office late in the afternoon for a cup of coffee.

"We certainly had our differences - quite profound," Davis said. "But we had a good relationship."

Sen. Peter Mills, R-Skowhegan, has a different recollection of Brennan's time in the Legislature - one that's less in keeping with the spirit of compromise and more about delivering benefits for constituents.

Mills said Brennan regularly refused to give an inch when lawmakers were deciding how much money to spend on social services, holding a particularly strong line to protect funding related to mental illnesses.

"I mean, he would hang himself out there all alone sometimes," Mills said.
Mills also recalled a long-running dispute over school funding that he and Brennan had during the 1990s.

The argument involved how education money should be divided between urban and rural areas.

Brennan was an advocate for cities such as Portland, while Mills fought for more rural areas like his own district.

Mills said that he saw a contradiction between Brennan's liberal political views and his efforts on behalf of places with greater property wealth.

Brennan responded by saying that property values are only one measure of wealth, and Portland looks less wealthy when income is also counted as a factor.

He said his work on school funding required a balance between fighting for his constituents' interests and seeking equity statewide.

"I think overall that we ended up achieving that balance," he said.

Since last summer, when Brennan entered the 1st District congressional race, he has endorsed gay marriage and said that he would vote to end funding for the Iraq war.

He also has emphasized issues that have gotten less attention from other candidates.

Brennan is calling for increased funding for affordable housing and says he wants to provide free college tuition to all high school graduates.
But perhaps what is most distinctive about Brennan's campaign - when compared with the races run by his rivals - is its tone.

While Pingree, Strimling and Lawrence all have called for impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney, Brennan has not. Instead, he's been making the case for collaboration.

Back in January, Brennan was the only one of the six Democratic candidates to endorse Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign has also been built around a message of togetherness.

CAN LIBERAL POLICIES BE ACHIEVED?

In a recent interview, Brennan said that he's been reading "The Second Civil War," a book that laments how Congress is now more partisan than it's been in several decades.

It remains to be seen whether some of Brennan's liberal policy views can be implemented through bipartisan collaboration.

In particular, Brennan's goal of achieving universal health care through a single-payer system seems certain to meet with heavy resistance from the private health insurance industry.

But Brennan said that Maine's struggles with Dirigo Health have convinced him that universal health care cannot be achieved at the state level.

And, despite Dirigo's problems, he said that his own experience in negotiating the Dirigo plan with insurance companies and health care providers has solidified his belief in the importance of working together.

"The only way that you're able to reach agreement on issues," he said, "is if you understand the other person's position as well as you understand your own."

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