By Cliff White 

Staff Reporter

Attorney General Steven Rowe wants to be your next governor.

Rowe, 54, is originally from eastern Oklahoma. He attended West Point military academy after high school, and while completing his six-and-a-half year obligatory military service after graduation, he earned his MBA from the University of Utah.

“I grew up in a small town, and not a lot of students from my town went on to college. There just weren’t many opportunities available, and there wasn’t much encouragement to take advantage of those few opportunities which were available,” Rowe says. “Going to West Point was a great opportunity, and I took advantage of that.”

He and his wife, Amanda – whom he met in the Army – moved to Portland in 1981 and Rowe began work in the marketing and finance department of Fairchild Semiconductor. Three years later, he entered the University of Maine School of Law, and graduated in 1987, while still serving in the Army Reserves. 

Following law school, Rowe went to work for Unum in corporate governance and litigation. 

He was there for 12 years, while concurrently running for public office and serving eight years representing Portland in the Maine House of Representatives, from 1992 through 2000, including a term as Speaker of the House. In 2001, Rowe was selected by a secret ballot taken by the Legislature to be attorney general.

“I think serving the people is the highest calling there is,” Rowe says. “I really enjoy public service in all its forms – in the military, in the Legislature and I have really enjoyed my time as attorney general. It is a great honor to serve the people as a public official.”

Rowe says his years as attorney general have flown by because he has been so absorbed in his work.

“The attorney general’s job is to uniformly and fairly defend the law and protect the people of Maine. The work is very intellectually stimulating – and challenging,” Rowe says. “I enjoy the challenge of the office. It keeps it exciting.”

Rowe says the job as attorney general requires a much different mindset than that of legislator.

“I’m a Democrat and proud of that fact, but as attorney general, it is the duty of the office to deliver legal services in a non-partisan nature. So I pride myself on being non-partisan while serving in the office. We do our best to treat everyone the same – fairly and even-handedly, regardless of where they live or what their political affiliation is,” Rowe says.

Rowe says he is guided by his principles rather than his politics.

“I believe the attorney general has a fundamental responsibility to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people of Maine, but there is also a special responsibility to protect those who are most vulnerable – children, seniors, targets of unfair discrimination. If people believe that overlaps with my politics, I can see how they can think that way, but they’re wrong.”

The Maine Attorney General’s office is rather unique, Rowe says, because it shares the responsibility of criminal prosecution with the district attorneys – in most states, criminal prosecution is the district attorney’s responsibility alone. 

There are 104 lawyers in the four attorney general’s offices across the state, along with 62 research assistants and support staff and 12 detectives, working on a variety of objectives including a homicide investigation team, a drug task force, a financial crimes and civil rights unit, child protection and child support divisions, and divisions covering consumer protection and natural resources.

“Every day at the office is an adventure,” Rowe says.  “I’ll come into work with five things on my to-do list, and by the end of the day I’ll have done two of them and added five more to the list. The Maine Attorney General’s office is, from a mission perspective, one of the most diverse legal practices there is.”

Rowe says some of the most interesting work of the office is when it joins with other states to challenge federal laws or rulings, such as Maine’s recent challenge of the Clean Air Act. Rowe says he filed the lawsuit out of a concern for the health of the state’s population. 

“Because of the way the prevailing winds in the country blow, we effectively are at the end of the nation’s tail pipe,” Rowe says. “About 85 percent of the harmful pollutants found in Maine’s air are ‘from away.’ No state law we enact is going to make those pollutants go away. It is up to my office to protect the people of Maine, and if they are being harmed by a lack of action on the part of the federal government, it is my duty to make a legal challenge.”

Rowe does not think it insurrectionary for an individual state or group of states to challenge the federal government if they feel there is a real need to do so.

“It gives me no pleasure to sue the federal government on behalf of the state of Maine,” Rowe says. “However, there have been a number of occasions where I felt there was no alternative, in cases where federal agencies were not enforcing their own laws, or were interpreting them unfairly. It is the genius of federalism, but also what I would call the rub – that sometimes we need a court decision to see who is right.”

On the state level, Rowe opposes a proposal to suspend all criminal trials for six weeks this spring in response to Maine’s $225 million budget deficit. 

“It is important for defendants to have the right to a speedy trial, and I hope the delay does not occur” Rowe says.

Rowe believes Maine’s crime rate can be lowered through education.

“So much of criminality has to do with the human brain,” Rowe says. “It gets programmed from an early age, based on the child’s day-to-day experience. I am an advocate that children have a positive early life, and receive a good education. I feel so strongly we can change our society if we look and study how we act and see how we can do better.”

Rowe acknowledges that point of view will be better acted upon in his next job – if elected. Rowe recently announced plans to run for governor in 2010, when term limits force him and current Gov. John Baldacci from office.

“I’m running because I believe my objective is to help improve the lives of the people of Maine,” Rowe says. “I think for a long time we’ve been seen as being on the far end of the country. We have to start viewing ourselves as being at the center. We are in an advantageous position, and we must leverage our relationship with Canada and our natural resources if we want to get the most out of our potential.”

Rowe doesn’t think of himself as being “from away” or as a factor in the upcoming election. 

“I disagree with the opinion that Mainers have a negative view of people not born in this state,” Rowe says. “Mainers respect honesty, a strong work ethic and a sense of helping one another out. If you show them that, they treat you as one of their own.”

“I love this state and already think it’s the greatest state in the union, and I want to continue to do my part to make it better.”