Rise, Decline and Renewal

Rise, Decline and Renewal tells the remarkable story of the Maine Democratic Party – how it suddenly rose from irrelevance in 1954 with the election of Governor Ed Muskie, successfully challenged the ruling Republican Party over the next two decades, and initiated a creative period of wide-ranging reforms that produced a model government for a state long perceived as a cultural and economic backwater.

As a journalist, Douglas Rooks served as editorial page editor for the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, and editor and publisher of Maine Times; he has written about state government and politics for 33 years, earning numerous national and regional awards. His biography, Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible, was published in 2016 by Down East Books. A graduate magna cum laude of Colby College, he is former board president of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church, and lives with his wife in a 210-year-old farmhouse in West Gardiner.