Portrait by Irvin Serrano
Eliot Cutler’s New Deal
While most Mainers know Eliot Cutler as a recent independent candidate for governor, he’s also a lawyer and an international businessman. This year, he’s working to bring Maine lobster to about a billion potential customers in China.
For about a year, Eliot Cutler was front and center in Maine. His independent campaign for governor thrust him from relative unknown in his native state—despite his previous successes in law, business, and politics—to a name and a face that fell less than 10,000 votes shy of the Blaine House last November.
Cutler’s still here, and he may well be back in campaign mode someday. For now, Cutler is working, mostly away from the cameras, on several start-ups that he believes will make money and shine a light on the kind of opportunities Maine needs to embrace in an ever-changing global economy.
It’s midsummer, and Cutler’s new Portland offices are largely empty, but that’s about to change. He’s launched OneMaine (www.onemaine.com), a political organization for political moderates. He’s also started several companies focused on adding value to Maine products and exporting them to the rest of the country and the world.
Maine Seafood Ventures was first out of the gate, and by midsummer had successfully sold thousands of pounds of lobster in China, through a major Chinese food distributor.
“We think there is enormous potential in developing the Maine brand and tying it to products that are fresh, wild, traceable, sustainably-produced—and good for you,” Cutler says. “That’s what Maine is, and that’s what the Maine brand can be.
Maine Ahead talked to Eliot Cutler about his past, present, and future—and the economic hopes he has for Maine.
You’ve spent a lot of time outside the state of Maine, but you’ve largely been based here since 2000, outside of a few years in China. What keeps you coming back to Maine?
I wanted to come back right after law school. When [my wife] Melanie [Stewart Cutler] graduated from law school, in 1974, she was one of three very talented women applying for jobs at Portland law firms. The others were Meg Mills [now Margaret T. Johnson] and Eldie Acheson, [former secretary of state] Dean Acheson’s granddaughter. Eldie became assistant attorney general under Bill Clinton. Three women of considerable talent, and not one of them got an offer from a law firm in Portland—Portland didn’t have a lot of women lawyers. You could probably have counted them on the fingers of two hands, believe it or not. Melanie had offers from big New York firms, so we ended up in New York, then Washington. In the meantime, I owned property in Maine and we came here all the time, but it wasn’t until 2000 that the stars aligned and we could come back.
Maine’s always been my real home. I have always believed Maine’s a very special place, one of the few places in America where a real sense of community has survived. If you value community in your life and a close relationship with your natural surroundings, this is the only place to live. When I wasn’t living here, I always felt like I was on a temporary assignment, however long.
Tell us about growing up as a doctor’s kid, how that shaped the person you’d become.
My father [Dr. Lawrence Cutler] was chief of medical service at Eastern Maine Medical Center, chairman of the Bangor school board, and president of the board of trustees at the University of Maine. He was a beloved and highly regarded civic leader. My mother, Catherine, I often say, founded every not-for-profit organization in eastern Maine. So I’ve always felt an obligation to serve. I know that sounds trite. It sounds political, but it’s true.
I was also shaped by the fact that we were a minority—we were Jews. My grandfather was sent to the U.S. from Russia [now Belarus] in the 1880s to escape conscription into the czar’s army. In 1978 or 1979, the president asked me to help lead a delegation to Russia for the signing of a science and technology treaty. The Russians arranged for us to go to St. Petersburg, to the Kirov Ballet, at this beautiful opera house, and they sat us in the czar’s box. I thought, if my grandfather could see me, less than 100 years later, sitting there, wow. Things change.
What was your road not taken?
One was not coming back to Maine after law school. As I noted earlier, that road was blocked; it was barricaded. Another came after I left the White House, in 1980. I had a lot of offers from big investment banking firms. If I’d done that, I probably would have made a ton of money. But I never would have built the Denver airport and done a whole lot of those things that I ended up doing. In the last few years, a lot of bankers who made a lot of money lost their reputations, but mine is intact; and I had the privilege of running for governor. My regrets are long buried.
Did you want to be a lawyer or a politician?
I was a good lawyer, but I’ve never thought of myself as only a lawyer. The thing that’s made me successful—the ability to fashion solutions to problems that stymie others—didn’t come from law school. It came from working with Senator [Edmund S.] Muskie and watching him legislate. Muskie was one of the great legislators of the 20th century, maybe even all of American history. There isn’t anybody like him around now.
On Election Day 2010, you did very well in Portland, L/A, and Bangor, and as the results came in, you had the lead for quite a while. How did you feel about losing by such a narrow margin?
I’ve said a hundred times: The only thing I regret about that campaign was losing, and I mean that. It was a remarkable experience.
Because we were doing our own polling, I knew the polls the Press Herald was publishing were just daffy. A couple weeks out, I thought we were close to overtaking Paul LePage; I knew we’d left Libby [Mitchell] in the dust. We tried to get some Republican endorsements. [Former Governor] Angus [King] endorsed, but I think it was too late. By 11 o’clock that night, I thought it unlikely that I was going to win. I had believed for some time that if Libby was held to 17% or 18% of the votes, we would win; she did a little better than that, and we lost. But remember, I started at zero!
How did running for office change you?
Everybody knows who I am now, so I have to be a lot more careful about how I drive, what I say, how I dress [laughs]. I’ve never had as much fun in my life as I did as a candidate. It’s about people and ideas, and it made me appreciate the state of Maine even more. I thought I knew the state, and I didn’t know it nearly as well as I do now. I met so many wonderful people, and it’s a richness in my life that wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t run. I’m very, very grateful for the opportunity to have run.
Can we expect to see you run for office again?
The answer is not no, but it’s not yet yes, either.
Tell us about OneMaine.
It became clear during the campaign that there are thousands of Maine people who do not feel engaged by or served by the political parties and processes we have. Both parties have become increasingly dominated by very narrow—and in some cases, very self-interested—groups of people who don’t really address the public’s needs. I think the strength of Maine politics has always been the moderate people on both sides, working together. We’re trying to reinvigorate that. OneMaine is a political organization for people who are centrists, regardless of other labels, and who want to work together.
The response has been dramatic. I think that political parties are an endangered species, and OneMaine is not a party. We’re going to support candidates for the legislature in 2012 who are committed to working with each other, who are centrists, who are problem solvers. We’re going to help build a legislature that is more reflective of what I think Maine people want. I want to see a legislature that doesn’t run away from an anti-bullying law because some very narrow sliver of an interest group has blown a whistle and scared everyone—in that case, Republicans—to death. I don’t want to see a bunch of legislators who run away from charter schools—in that case, Democrats—because the teachers’ union says no.
What’s your long-term vision for OneMaine and what it can accomplish?
I hope it will create a magnet that will draw people and parties back to the middle. We know—from polling, from election results, from Maine’s history—that the people in the middle far outnumber those who feel aligned with the parties’ narrow and more extreme positions. These people feel voiceless, and I want to cure that. If we succeed, we’ll pull the parties and the political dialogue back to the middle. It’s going to be more civil, and more focused on solving problems instead of implementing ideologies. That’s what we need, and that’s the purpose. It’s really no fancier than that.
What does a moderate, a centrist, believe?
Some people say it’s just a label, like liberal or conservative. It is and it isn’t. A moderate is someone whose views on issues aren’t particularly extreme; someone willing to sit down with others, to listen, and to build solutions that work. It is, frankly, the way Muskie legislated. He’d hold 30 or 40 days of hearings, listening to people from every side, and then create bills that were unanimously supported by his committee. And it worked! The notion that something has to prevail on an 8-to-7 vote in order to succeed is wrong. I believe Maine is a shared enterprise, that we all have a stake in this community and that we need to face up to our problems and solve them. We have enormous potential to be as we’ve been before, a great place to live and raise a family. I think you get there by being a moderate.
Tell us about the work you’re doing to develop a market for Maine exports and lobster in China.
Historically, Maine’s economy and Maine’s success have been based largely on our rich natural resources, adding value to those resources, and exporting them. Our biggest industry, tourism, is an export industry: We’re exporting experiences. We’ve lost sight of that, and we need to refocus.
Together with John and Brendan Ready [Ready Seafood; see Maine Ahead, “Lobster Buoys,” August 2010], Tom Dunne [a former partner at Accenture and director of Dirigo Health], and Dan Boxer [formerly a senior partner with Pierce Atwood, Fairchild Semiconductor executive, and cofounder of Backyard Farms], we’ve started a company called Maine Seafood Ventures. Our goal is to add value to native Maine foods and export them, domestically and internationally. We decided to start with lobster, and we are processing them in Maine—as opposed to Canada—and shipping them to Asia, primarily China, through a relationship with COFCO, China’s largest food distribution company, and through other outlets. COFCO is marketing Maine lobster on their website, www.womai.com.
I’m also involved in two or three other business enterprises, all of which are based on exporting Maine products and Maine resources.
Why the focus on natural resources?
We live in a world that’s much, much smaller than it was 20 years ago, and we need to focus on Maine’s advantages and strengths. We’re also in the midst of a productivity revolution. There’s been little recovery in employment because companies are investing capital in machines and software rather than in people, except where creativity and innovation are involved. We’ve got to focus on those areas where employment is going to survive this productivity revolution. We’re well positioned in Maine to do that. There are things we have that no one else has. Lobsters are a great example.
I’ve also heard about your efforts to bring Chinese capital investment to the state. Why would Chinese businesspeople want to invest in Maine?
The Chinese bought the Domtar Mill in Washington County. That’s been a great boost to the Downeast economy. We have been talking with the Chinese about various investments in Maine. Looking out 20 to 30 years, we have great opportunities from our natural resources. We have to maintain those resources, grow them, and manage them responsibly, but they’re going to grow in value. The Chinese understand that.
What are the selling points when you’re talking to the Chinese about investing in Maine?
In a growing and more affluent economy, the Chinese worry about access to food from sustainable, traceable, clean sources of supply. That’s us! Melanie and I both love fish, but we seldom ate seafood in China because we knew how dirty many of the farms and fisheries are. Well, so do a lot of the Chinese. And there are a billion and a half of them!
In a recent interview, you stated that no major drug manufacturer would come to Maine because we’ve “saddled ourselves with a cost structure that’s crushing our opportunities.” What specifically are you talking about?
When an employer looks at Maine, the cost of electricity and the cost of health care in the state are crushing burdens. All of our advantages in terms of our skilled labor, our people, our communities, and how great a place it is to live—that all can get trumped by these costs. Bath Iron Works, for example, has one competitor of consequence, in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and electricity costs 25% less there. If you process lobster here, you’re competing with the Canadians, who pay less for electricity. The price of electricity is critical.
Any ideas on lowering the cost of health care?
When you spend 20 cents of every healthcare dollar on the overhead, administration, and profit of health insurance companies who aren’t delivering care, that’s inefficient. We need to figure out how to strengthen our very good hospital systems so that health care is available at a lower cost to every citizen in the state.
We also need to make sure that Maine people are incentivized to take better care of themselves and live healthier lives as opposed to wrestling with a system where payments for procedures is the hallmark and where emergency room care, which is the most expensive care of all, is the default answer for too many people.
Can a state, and a state like Maine, fix things like electricity and healthcare costs on its own?
Absolutely. Vermont is doing it. There’s a convergence there and around the country, called Accountable Care Organizations. Basically, ACOs are providers like hospitals that also take over the functions of an insurance company. When hospitals in Maine employ 85% of all Maine primary care physicians, which is the case, why do we need health insurance companies?
Vermont is putting into place a statewide ACO system that’s very similar to what I proposed during the campaign. They’re taking advantage of the new federal law that encourages these things.
What else do you, as a businessman, think should and realistically could be done to improve the economic environment in the state?
The other big thing is education. We avoided charter schools for so long, which is crazy. We have a funding formula for K-12 public education that remains biased against rural areas. We have a post secondary system that’s overwhelmed by its own disorganization. We’ve got to do a lot better, because when employers look at Maine, they see too many undereducated and underskilled workers. Our skilled workforce in Maine is getting older; we’ve got to invest more in education and training.
As someone trying to bring business from China into the state, if you could ask the state legislature for one thing, what would it be?
Well, I’ll give two answers: One is lower electricity costs, because we’re processing lobster and that’s a big piece of it. The other thing is for a concentrated, focused effort to build and develop the Maine brand—not just for lobster, furniture, paper, or tourism—but a single brand that leads people around the world to associate Maine with quality. It is a huge opportunity that we’re missing.
What does it really take to develop the Maine brand?
It’s really about thinking strategically and adding value in a global economy. There’s no place like Maine: We are clean, sustainable, traceable. We are communities, civic responsibility, and engagement; skilled people, good people. We can be known for innovation, for opportunity. Maine is unique and we need to develop that into a brand that adds value to what we make and what we do and why people want to come here. Now, rebuilding Maine’s economy is going to take time and effort to implement, but it can be done.
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The Cutler File
Born: July 29, 1946, Bangor
Education: BA, social relations and government, Harvard University, 1968; JD, Georgetown Law School, 1974.
Career: Cutler was a legislative assistant to Senator Edmund Muskie (1968–1972). He went on to become special assistant and counsel to the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution (1972–1974). His first two jobs allowed him to help craft the Clean Air Act, the Water Pollution Control Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. He later served as associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for Natural Resources, Energy and Science (1977–1980) and as the principal White House official for energy policy (1978–1980). He held senior leadership roles in four presidential campaigns: for Muskie as deputy press secretary for vice presidential campaign (1968) and director of scheduling and advance (1972); director of scheduling and advance for President Jimmy Carter (1976) and senior advisor to Walter Mondale (1984). He was a partner of Webster Sheffield, Washington, D.C. (1980–1988).
In 1988, he cofounded Cutler and Stanfield, which grew into one of the largest environmental firms in the U.S., and where he played a key role in the construction of Denver International Airport. The firm merged with Akin Gump in 2000, and Cutler is senior counsel of the firm’s Washington and Beijing offices. He spent three years in China running the Beijing office. He ran in the 2010 Maine gubernatorial race as an independent.
Personal: Cutler lives in Cape Elizabeth with wife, Melanie Stewart Cutler, a former lawyer who attended medical school in her 40s and is a self-employed psychiatrist in Portland. They have two adult children of their own, and a third adult child who joined their family as a teenager.
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