Maine's Maynard: the biography of Robert M. Menard

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Robert Michel Ménard was born in Lewiston, Maine on July 23, 1933, the first and only child of Michel and Florence Ménard.

Lewiston, Maine in 1933 was a struggling industrial town, which had seen its status as one of the big New England textile towns diminished as the end of World War I ushered in a decline in the profits of New England textile and a transfer of Lewiston's jobs to the South. Yet, under the New Deal, textile mills workers in Lewiston and other mill towns in Maine became more prosperous and a new, more educated, middle-class emerged in Lewiston as the mills started dwindling in size.

Earlier in the twentieth century, the big mill towns in New England, most notable of which were Lowell and Lewiston, attracted many foreign immigrants. Among them, Irish, Europeans but most notably French-Canadians who sought work and fortune in the United States because Quebec was becoming overpopulated and good arable land was in short supply. Integration and assimilation into a largely Protestant and overwhelmingly English culture was tough for individualistic-minded French-Canadians, who often tended to form ethnic societies and congregate around exclusive church schools or religious associations who were concerned more by personal economic betterment and the protection of French rights than by politics or anything else.

Among these French-Canadians who emigrated to Maine were Michel Ménard and Florence Tremblay. Michel Ménard was born in June 1899 near Saint-Georges in the Beauce, Quebec's rural heartland. His parents were small subsistence farmers who struggled to earn a living and lived in an isolated hamlet far from basically everything. When Michel was but one year old, in 1900, his family immigrated to the United States after having heard stories of old neighbors and friends who had found work and money in abundant supply in New England. They settled in Lewiston, already a town with a thriving French-Canadian - or French-American - population. Educated in Franco-American-led church schools and private Catholic schools in Lewiston, Michel didn't have time to finish high school properly before his father enrolled Michel, alongside himself, in the Bates Mill, the largest textile mill in the town. Michel found the work hard and didn't see where the abundant supply of money that his father's old neighbors had talked about was. He struggled to earn a meager living for himself and hopefully move out of his parent's "house", but first he needed to learn decent English. Having been educated in French church schools and regimented by his deeply French-Catholic parents into speaking French first and foremost, he had little knowledge of English and, worse, had little contact with the other communities of Lewiston. While his ageing father, already 51 in 1917, had little interest in learning English to communicate with the 'outside world' at his age, Michel thought that only through learning the local language could he communicate outside his French cocoon and then, perhaps, he would see the fabled supply of greenbacks that had made the United States a great place in his young mind. Despite his father's reluctance, Michel mixed with other 'ethnics' at the mill and started bettering his English and also became closer to the American mill owners or shift leaders. Yet, Michel, largely through his parent's insistence, remained active in French-language ethnic groups. That was were he met, in 1920, Florence Tremblay, a young girl of 19 who was a shy participant, alongside her parents, in those small ethnic groups. Florence herself had been born in Maine in 1901, her parents having immigrated to the mills as early as 1890 from a small agrarian hamlet in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region of Quebec. Florence and Michel soon became close and Florence helped Michel perfect his English and guide him through the non-ethnic life of Lewiston. Yet, Michel's father, was far from hot on the idea of marrying his son at the age of 21 to a young girl. He distrusted Florence and preferred to have his son work at the mill and bring money home to the family (Michel's father fell sick and retired from the mill in 1920). Though Florence and Michel continued to see each other - largely in secret - they waited until Michel's tough father died from a heart attack in 1926 to officialize their relationship. Michel's mother, a shy and low-key person, never objected to her son's desire to marry Florence, and the two got married in May 1927. Michel was 28 and Florence was 26.

While Michel continued working at the mill, Florence found a low-paying job as a clerk in a small store in downtown Lewiston, the Francophone area of the city. Their first and only offspring, Robert, waited until 1933, by which time Florence was 32 and Michel was 34.

Robert was educated, unlike his parents, in the public system. This choice was inspired by Michel and Florence's profound desire to integrate themselves better into the American lifestyle and slowly break with their old, agrarian, Catholic and Francophone lifestyle. While they still attended ethnic French clubs and remained devout Catholics, they wanted their son - born in the United States - to be like an average American. He attended Lewiston High School, the city's largest public high school, opened in 1850. While Robert excelled academically as a student, especially in history and English (ironically), he struggled within the school community where Protestant 'WASP' teachers and similarly 'WASP' schoolmates looked down on the French kid with the weird last name (pronounced, in America, Maynard). The quasi-bullying and degradation made him increasingly depressed and introverted, to the point where he didn't wish to attend university after he graduated in 1951. Guided by his father, but also by his Grade 12 History teacher, who called him 'Maynard Keynes', he slowly became more extroverted and wished to attend university. His teacher found in him a talent for history, politics and debating and spearheaded his admission to the University of Southern Maine's campus in Lewiston.

Enrolled in USM's Arts and Humanities program, the young Robert became a keen political and legal mind majoring in law. He graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Law in 1957 and became a legal a legal assistant in a local lawyer's office who was specialized in labour law and often dealt with the complaints of former mill employees who were not properly compensated after being laid off. As a thriving 24-year old legal assistant, Robert became well-known with laid-off mill workers - most mills had closed down in the '60s and the town suffered from rising unemployment. It was in this tough context that Robert became deeply involved in local politics. Old mill workers liked the young Franco-American because they felt he represented them well and understood their concerns and problems. Furthermore, his father being an old mill worker himself, Robert had an early base with old French-Canadian mill workers who saw him as their representative and 'go-to-guy'. Robert saw politics as a way to fix the problems of these men and the method to bring jobs back to Lewiston.

Politics didn't really interest anybody in his family. His grandparents never registered to vote - after all, they barely spoke English. His father and mother rarely voted and were largely apathetic towards politics. He knew that his father had voted, like most French-Canadians, for the Catholic Governor of New York Al Smith in 1928, if only because they felt that the US needed a Catholic President. His father had liked Roosevelt's New Deal and kept voting Democratic until 1948, which was the last time he voted. He liked Eisenhower, like most Franco-Americans, but hadn't voted. Ironically, Robert, eligible to vote in 1954, didn't vote in the 1956 presidential election, when Republican nominee Eisenhower was re-elected partly on strong Francophone support. However, he was inspired by the young Catholic Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, who became the Democratic nominee for President in 1960 against Vice President Richard Nixon. While he still didn't care more about the issues behind the election, Robert liked the idea of a young and fresh face in politics. He thought that it would bring the jobs back to Lewiston. He campaigned for Kennedy in Lewiston and around Maine, and was shunned by deeply nativist Protestant Republicans in rural Maine. Kennedy won the election, but lost Maine by a wide margin though he carried Androscoggin County by a huge margin over Nixon.

In the 1960s, as the mills continued to close and the jobs continued to leave town, Robert slowly became disillusioned with politics. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 broke his remaining links with Maine Democrats and was too disillusioned with politics and the conflict in Vietnam to bother turning out to vote in President Lyndon Johnson's slam-dunk reelection in 1964. Throughout Johnson's term, Robert continued work in law and became a well-known lawyer-activist fighting for the rights of the old mill workers in Lewiston. He was also active in small anti-Vietnam protests in the town, but his real interest in politics only returned in 1968, when America stood at a turning point. He became deeply inspired by Robert Kennedy, especially liking his appeal to ethnic minorities and poor 'forgotten' people. He felt that Kennedy could finally do what all others had failed to do: rejuvenate an ageing and struggling Lewiston. Thus, his disillusion was even more when Kennedy was assassinated following his victory in the California primaries. The violence of the DNC in Chicago in the summer further disillusioned him, but became local guy Ed Muskie, whom Robert had met twice in Lewiston, was Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey's running-mate, he ended up voting for Humphrey over the eventual winner, Richard Nixon in November.

Yet, unlike in 1963, his disillusionment with politics following Robert Kennedy's shooting did not result in his withdrawal from politics. Notably because his father died of cancer in 1969 because he couldn't afford treatment in Portland, he became deeply unhappy with the direction of the country under Nixon and strongly opposed the Vietnam War, and thus became increasingly active in the Maine Democratic Party. In 1972, he supported Ed Muskie but still voted for George McGovern, the man who had come second in New Hampshire's primary, over Nixon, whom he loathed. He resisted pressure to run for the House in the 2nd district but remained active in the party of which he was now a member of.

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ftr, this is part one of four of my entry into Kalwejt's contest,

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His electoral outing came in 1976, when he challenged incumbent Representative Peter N. Kyros in Maine's 1st district. He accused Kyros of not fighting hard enough for Maine workers and families and notably told voters that Maine deserved "an active member, not a backbencher". Surprisingly, his underdog challenge worked against the four-term incumbent, who lost to Menard 51-49. Menard went on to beat Republican nominee David F. Emery - even though Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter lost to Gerald Ford in Maine (but still won nationally).

Active in the US House Committee on Education and Labor, led by KY Rep. Carl D. Perkins. He became a reasonably active member and was well liked in his district from bringing some jobs - service and government jobs - to southern Maine. His work in DC paid off because he was re-elected 65-35 in 1978 and 56-44 in 1980. Under the Reagan presidency, he was vocally opposed to Reagan's tax and budget cuts on the domestic front and later of Reagan's Latin American policy on the foreign policy front. With unemployment high after the 1982 closure of the historic Bates Mill and other historic shopping outlets in Lewiston, the 1982 mid-term elections were shaping up to be bad for Maine Republicans. He won a new term in November 1982 with 67% of the vote, his highest vote share ever.

Though the economy was getting better nationally and even in Maine, Lewiston remained a struggling post-industrial town in 1986 and people in the town remained unhappy with the shape of things. Encouraged by his strong base of support and high popularity in his district, and also the encouragement of incumbent Governor Joseph E. Brennan (D-ME); Menard threw his hat into the 1986 gubernatorial contest. The field was wide open because Brennan was term-limited, so Menard's notoriety helped him a lot in the primary against state Attorney General James Tierney. He ended up beating Tierney 54-46 thanks to a whopping margin in his home Androscoggin County. He went on to face State Senator John McKernan, whom he had narrowly defeated for re-election to the House in 1980, and two independent candidates. Running on a platform of economic growth, social protection and environmental protection, he defeated McKernan by a 3-point margin in November 1986 though he only won 41% of the overall vote to McKernan's 38%.

Taking office in January 1987, with a pleasing $46 million surplus, Menard's first priority was economic growth in Maine. He created the Maine Economic Development Fund (MEDF), a large-scale government-run fund which sought to create new jobs in new technologies (IT etc) and revitalize old industrial centres such as Lewiston. Benefiting from the budget surplus, he was able to implement light tax cuts on the lowest classes of the economy and on businesses to spur economic growth. The MEDF, by 1990, had helped created many new jobs in modern economic centres and had also helped municipalities such as Auburn and Lewiston fund urban renewal projects. Yet, by 1988, there was small deficit and Menard faced battles with Republican state legislators who told him to cut spending. They attacked the MEDF as 'wasteful, useless big-government spending'. He resisted attempts by Republicans to have him cut welfare and job training benefits, because he knew that if he did that, he would lose his life-long base with working-class voters in southern Maine. In 1989, he took the risky move of increasing taxes on the wealthiest voters, but by the 1990 election, Maine had a balanced budget again but was financially shaky.

He faced a revitalized Republican opposition led by John McKernan in the 1990 election, when he ran for re-election on a platform promising to maintain the generally popular MEDF and fight for a state health insurance plan. He also promised a ban on workplace discrimination and tough environmental legislation. He accused the Republicans of legislative obstruction during his first term and called their attacks on the MEDF 'disingenuous' and 'dishonest'. In the end, Menard beat McKernan 45-43.

Menard took office for a second term in January 1991 and found himself faced with a deficit once again and a still vibrant Republican opposition. Yet, he managed to maintain the MEDF and, in a his most marking move, passed the Maine Healthcare Plan (MHP) in 1991, a wide-reaching plan which offered public health insurance to all uninsured citizens in Maine and forced insurance companies to reduce costs for private insurance. As promised in his 1990 campaign, he passed new environmental regulations which included, notably, a recycling program, a state park revitalization program and an air-pollution reduction program which included tax rebates for buying less polluting vehicles and public transit as well as a special allocation, through the MEDF, for research into less polluting ways of transportation. He passed a workplace discrimination ban, which banned any sort of discrimination based on sexuality, race, gender or religion in the summer of 1991.


In November 1991, his approval rating stood at 65% in Maine. His MHP was gaining in popularity despite the early unpopularity of the plan and the state was a rare beacon of economic growth while the country struggled economically. He took the risky move of deciding to run for President as the massive underdog in a race including AR Governor Bill Clinton, CA Governor Jerry Brown, fmr. MA Senator Paul Tsongas and NE Senator Bob Kerrey. His primary strategy, a risky one, put all his hope in a double-win in the Feb. 18 NH Primary and a (likelier win) in Maine on Feb. 23. From there, he thought, he could get momentum going into Super Tuesday on March 3. He declared his candidacy late in November 1991 and style his candidacy as a candidacy of change, reform, and economic growth. He put huge emphasis on the success of the MEDF and the MHP, his hallmark programs in Maine. His poll numbers increased as voters got to know him more, but he struggled outside of New England - and even there he had to face Tsongas. Many thought that while he likable, he was far too inexperienced, too 'local' of a guy to win the presidency in 1992. January 1, 1992 polling in NH had him down 6 points to Paul Tsongas.

next: 1992 campaign

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Having all skipped Iowa in deference to local favourite son Sen. Tom Harkin, the Democratic field, which in January 1992 had Tsongas ahead of the rest of the pack, which consisted of Clinton, Menard, Brown and Kerrey; turned its attention to New Hampshire which was a make-or-break contest for Tsongas, Menard and Clinton (and Brown, Kerrey and Harkin to a lesser extent). Despite being well-known and well-liked in next-door Maine, Menard's appeal or notoriety did not extend to New Hampshire where primary voters felt that they didn't know him much.

Menard's campaign team had work to do. First and foremost would be getting Menard's name out there and raising his profile throughout the country and in the early states in particular. The campaign ran ads and Menard himself attended Democratic Party meetings throughout the country and developed links with major Democratic Governors, Senators and Representatives. Secondly, they needed to position Menard ideologically. While he had been a successful governor, he did not have links to any of the major ideological clans of the party and his administration in Maine was hard to pin down ideologically. Republicans called him a tax-and-spend liberal, the mainstream media called him a centrist or moderate liberal, while some left-wing Democrats called him a working-class populist based on his political roots with working-class voters in southern Maine. The Democratic field in 1992 had Tsongas, the apparent front-runner, running as a social liberal but economic centrist while Clinton was the Southern Democrat, not a Blue Dog but definitely a centrist Democrat. Although Jerry Brown supported a balanced budget while governor and was called a fiscal conservative back then, his campaign had liberal-populist grassroots support and struck a populist tone in its attack on corruptions and cronyism. Menard's campaign decided to position him as a 'pragmatic, reformist liberal', a vague-ish positioning which amounted to being seen as one of the left-wing's contenders against the more moderate Clinton and Tsongas. Menard stressed, on one hand, his social liberalism (he was pro-choice, pro-gay rights) but also his economic program which favoured government intervention to spur economic growth (he emphasized the MEDF's success in Maine) and also protect workers from being unfairly laid-off or poorly paid. He also took the risky move of placing much emphasis on Maine's public healthcare plan, which, despite being very unpopular with conservatives and even slightly unpopular with moderates, appealed well to the liberal and urban base of the party. Like Ed Muskie in the past, he also became one of the rare Democratic contenders in 1992 to place much emphasis on environmental issues and expressed his interest in establishing a tax rebate for 'greener' cars nationally, like he had done in Maine.

By January 1992, his position was well established with the party's establishment. He was socially and economically liberal, and had some appeal to working-class voters in New England. Yet, his name recognition in polls remained low and there was concern that he was too northern and liberal of a candidate to break through in the South. He doubled-up on his campaigning in New Hampshire, where he ran ads portraying his MEDF and MHP in positive light. The visibility of these ads, his intensive campaigning but also the Gennifer Flowers affair involving Bill Clinton helped Menard catch up with Tsongas, who took the lead in New Hampshire in late January following the Flowers scandal. On February 2, Menard stood in second in New Hampshire with 26% to Tsongas' 34% while Clinton had 21% support. On February 10, Harkin won his expected landslide in Iowa but the lack of attention given to Iowa by the others did not garner additional momentum for Harkin, who remained a very distant underdog. As the Feb. 18 contest drew near, polls showed Menard's notoriety was increasing with Democratic primary voters, who also had an increasingly positive opinion of Menard and his hallmark public healthcare plan. On Feb. 16, the last polling day in New Hampshire, a poll showed him down 3 points against Tsongas. He was also far ahead in Maine, unsurprisingly, but struggled in the March 3 states.

On February 18th, Menard won 30.1% of the vote in New Hampshire against 29.8% for Tsongas and a paltry 19.8% for Clinton. Hailed by the media as the underdog winner, Menard was on a roll. In his victory speech, he put much emphasis, for the first time ever, on his French-Canadian roots and used his ancestry as a way to show that he could be the candidate to build a "more perfect Union". From then on, his campaign changed its facade rhetoric to emphasize Menard as the "coalition builder" and the "lil French guy" who could build "a more perfect Union"

Menard unsurprisingly won a landslide in Maine, winning 71% of the vote. The hard part came in the March 3 states (Menard skipped North Dakota's Feb. 25 contest). Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Minnesota, Utah and Washington held caucuses or primaries on that day. Menard took the risky strategy of focusing on the most winnable contests in the lot: CO, MD, MN and WA. He was still little known in the Midwest and the Pacific Coast, but he built a strong grassroots base there over time and campaigning there, he struck a tone with the liberal base in the caucus states and even the primary states. He was further helped by the fact that the contest was wide open, and Kerrey and Brown were competing hard in the Midwestern and Pacific states.

Four things came out of March 3: Menard didn't gain tremendous momentum from NH/ME, Tsongas' shock defeat in NH sealed his campaign's chances, Clinton still had a base in the South and finally the race was still wide open between Menard, Clinton, Brown and Kerrey. Tsongas lost narrowly in Utah, but he still dropped out. Harkin dropped out on March 4.  

Menard's campaign struggled through March despite being the plurality winner of March 3's contest. While he performed decently in the ND caucuses on the 5th, he lost all contests on March 7-8, though granted they were not in states favourable to him. It remained an unforeseen four-way contest between New England's Menard, the West Coast's Brown, the Midwest's Kerrey and the South's Clinton.

On March 10, the cards changed a bit. Kerrey and Brown failed to win anything (Brown was hoping to win in Hawai'i, which Menard narrowly won). The race became Clinton vs. Menard, with Brown a third factor and Kerrey dwindling away (he dropped out March 19). Yet, Clinton now had a narrow advantage due to big victories in the South and an important, albeit marginal, win in Florida over Menard. Menard solidified himself as the candidate of the Northeast, with big wins in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

March 17's primaries in Illinois and Michigan were to be crucial opportunities for Menard to appeal to a demographic Maine didn't have much have (non-whites) but also working-class voters outside of New England. The MHP was more unpopular with voters in IL and MI than in New England, but Menard still played on it as proof that he cared about the fate of poor people and that he was determined to fight for them. Yet, his campaign feared that Clinton's warm, endearing and young personality would harm Menard, who came off to voters as too 'technical' and 'distant'. In the end, the primaries split 1-1 between Clinton (IL) and Menard (MI), although Menard's win in Michigan was by a much larger margin that Clinton's win in Illinois. Menard ended the month with landslides in Vermont and Connecticut. Brown, on his hand, was playing a distant role in all primaries, seeking to stack up delegates in case of a brokered convention. His January-February polling leads in VT, MI and CT had disappeared.

On April 7, attention shifted to Wisconsin, where a big Menard-Clinton battle was brewing (Clinton was far ahead in KS and Menard similarly far ahead in NY). In the end, thanks to heavy support in the more progressive western parts of the state, Menard won Wisconsin surprisingly comfortably. He was increasingly likely to win the nomination, but Clinton fought on (Brown also fought on). On April 28, he squeaked past Clinton to win a crucial primary in Pennsylvania.

May was tough for him as Clinton gained ground and defied predictions. Clinton swept North Carolina, narrowly won Indiana and then won by large margins in West Virginia and Nebraska. On May 26, he obviously won Arkansas and won by a large margin in Kentucky. Menard's only win in May was a May 19th win in Oregon, a win which, on the positive side, proved that Brown was going nowhere. Brown didn't read the writing on the wall and and didn't drop out, soldiering on to the showdown looming in California on June 2.

Menard hit the ground hard ahead of the June 2 showdowns which would seal the primaries, still inconclusive. Through personality coaches, he adopted a warmer style of campaigning, spending more time in small coffee shops with voters and attending smaller town-hall style meetings instead of big rallies which he still personally preferred. He ran tough ads attacking Clinton on various fronts, and also ran an ad against Brown in California with aim of telling Brown's remaining liberal base supporters that Menard was the top liberal contender. His strategy paid off as he won big in Ohio, Montana, New Jersey and New Mexico. Clinton won only Alabama, while Menard eked out a crucial primary-ending win in California. In California, he took 43% to Clinton's 36% while Brown won only 21% in his homestate. Most of Brown's base and establishment support had disappeared, even in his home turf. On June 3, he dropped out and immediately endorsed Menard. On June 4, Kerrey endorsed Menard as well (Harkin and Tsongas had already done so much earlier). In North Dakota's June 9 beauty contest primary, Menard won 66% to Clinton's 34% and sealed the 1992 Democratic nomination.

Menard in red, Clinton in blue, Brown in green, Harkin in dark orange, Kerrey in yellow