Dolloff and Dubord: The sequel to their 1962 photofinish primary

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By Paul Mills

My last column featured the closest primary election for a major Maine office of the last half century: the 1962 Democratic primary for governor. It was narrowly won by former Maine State Grange Master Maynard Dolloff. For both Dolloff and his defeated opponent, Waterville’s Richard Dubord, the primary was but a forerunner of eventful things to come. Here’s a profile of what lay ahead for both of them.

The Aftermath: Dolloff and the Cuban Missile Crises

For Maynard Dolloff, the close call primary was but a precursor to an even closer November election against Governor Reed. Dolloff’s 483-vote loss out of nearly 300-thousand cast would, like the primary that preceded it, be subject to a recount.
As with elections today, a prime issue was the economy: the GOP incumbent Reed defending it while Dolloff the challenger assailing it as stagnating. The candidates also sparred over a recent tightening of the eligibility for unemployment benefits, a factor in an endorsement by organized labor – then a more potent factor in Maine politics – of the Democratic candidate.

Just over two weeks before the election, the campaign was jarred by the confrontation with the Soviet Union over the revelation of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

News events over what for a time seemed like the brink of a world war clearly preempted voter interest in the campaign. Both candidates curtailed active campaigning in most of the final days. As with the campaign of any challenger taking on a better known incumbent, sustaining voter attention before an election can be crucial. The focus on an impending showdown with the Soviets that occasioned Dolloff’s leave of absence from the campaign also further diverted voter attention from it and the crisis was a probable factor in his loss.

Moreover, the crisis shifted the spotlight to Reed, who as governor helped supervise an emergency civil defense operating center in the basement of the State Office building. Fear of a Soviet nuclear strike was such that the Governor also mounted plans to move various government facilities to underground locations.

The recounts at the state level that year were also accompanied by a large number of recounts in other races down the ballot. An explanation was suggested by GOP Chair David Nichols, who observed:

“The glib answer is to say that today voters are attracted to personalities rather than motivated by party loyalty. Is this not partly due, however, to our failure to clearly draw the line between the parties? We must strive for a more positive image with which each voter can associates himself. Stronger emphasis should be placed upon those principles which have traditionally distinguished our Party.”

Nichols would not have to wait long for both a starker choice and more resounding voter mandate. That would occur just two years later with the Democratic landslide led by President Johnson over a GOP ticket headed up by Senator Goldwater, a campaign well known for the striking ideological differences of the two major parties. It also swept Democrats into control of the Maine legislature for the first time since 1914. With it came Dolloff’s election by the legislature as Commissioner of Agriculture. It was a post in which Dolloff would remain for over 10-years, until he went to Washington, first as an OSHA consultant and then as an Assistant Secretary of Agriculture.

Retiring to Waldoboro in 1981, Dolloff resumed active interest in the Grange until his death at age 85 in 1999.

The Aftermath: Dubord and the Muskie Campaign for President

Dubord’s rendezvous with major office also came with the 1964 elections. In Dubord’s case this meant selection by the legislature as state Attorney General. In the position, Dubord was acclaimed as a hands-on team player. He was one of the last Maine AG’s to take the lead as the state’s in-court prosecutor of homicide cases, for example.

The 1966 restoration of GOP control of the legislature spelled the end of Dubord’s days as AG but an even wider horizon opened up to him with the nomination of his long-time Waterville colleague, Ed Muskie, as Hubert Humphrey’s running mate in 1968. That fall, Dubord did advance work for Muskie, traveling throughout the country for the Maine senator as Muskie was heralded as one of the more reassuring voices in an otherwise turbulent campaign.

Dubord was slated for an even more significant assignment in Muskie’s run-up to the 1972 presidential nomination – a campaign in which Muskie was for over two and half years the leading Democratic contender – when at age 48 he suddenly succumbed to a ruptured blood vessel in his head. This was in early 1970 and was a major set-back to Muskie. As long time Muskie aide Don Nicoll explained recently in an e-mail to this columnist:

“We had just completed arrangements for Dick to join the presidential nomination campaign as Ed’s traveling aide when he died. I have always regarded that as one of the most serious blows to the campaign. Ed needed a good friend with him on those forays around the country, one who could serve as an advisor, sounding board, loyal confidant, on the scene observer and reporter for the campaign managers, and a cheerful and stimulating companion…. I performed many of those functions in 1968 as campaign manager with him, but I could not — for a variety of reasons — provide the ‘lift’ that Dick offered in the confounding climate of a national primary campaign. We never identified a replacement for Dick.”

Thus, as Nicoll observes, Muskie would have been a stronger candidate with Dubord at his side. As such, Muskie might well have won the nomination. If he had, he would have been a more centrist alternative to President Nixon than that afforded by McGovern and would have had a stronger opportunity to prevail in the election. Had he done so, the Watergate break-in would have been but a footnote; and there’d have been no impeachment hearings arising out of it. The course of modern American history might well have been dramatically different.

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1 Comment

  1. Thanks for this, Paul. Excellent Maine political history. I remember these men but I never knew “the rest of the story.”

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