PORTLAND — In sports, the team that comes so close to winning it all can rightly say, “Wait ’til next year!” In politics — at least at the national level — it’s more of “once and done.”
But Eliot Cutler, an entrepreneur who has worked at the corporate level of the economy after an early career working for the Carter administration, has been a presumptive front-runner since his close second place showing in the gubernatorial race in 2010.
As an independent with some personal wealth, Cutler can duck the primary battles and remind voters of how close he came last time, and how momentum was swinging his way in the latter days of the campaign.
The Working Waterfront interviewed him at the offices of MaineAsia in Portland, where he and his partners have developed trade with China.
WW: So, you’re thinking about running for governor again”¦
A: I am thinking about it. [Long pause, then laughs.] But that’s as far as I’m going to go in this interview. The way Maine law is written, once you either raise money or spend money in contemplation of a candidacy, you have to file a committee and we’ve done that. But I’m doing an awful lot of listening and intend to over the course of the next several months and as I told someone the other day, I’ve left the back door ajar. But my assumption is I’m going to run. That’s the plan.
WW: If you do run, what would the theme of your campaign be? Last time you stressed that you were independent”¦
A: What’s interesting is that I don’t think the issues have changed all that much. Maine has been stuck in a frozen economy for ten years. Just dead stuck. We have as many jobs in Maine as we did in 1999. Nothing’s changed in the last couple of years in those respects, certainly. And what I intend to suggest to the people of Maine if I do run is that with a vision, with a plan that everybody understands and is behind we can make Maine an economic powerhouse. It’s not that hard.
But we’ve got to have leadership and we’ve got to have a plan. And I’m going to try to provide that.
WW: My next question was going to be what has changed in the last two-and-a-half years”¦
A: Unfortunately, not much. People are still not working. People are still no earning that the kind of money they need for themselves and their families. In a state that’s as rich in natural resources as we are there is no excuse for that. None.
WW: Well that leads to my next question, about natural resources. In 2010, Democrats suggested in a mailing to voters that you wanted to ship Maine jobs to China. Most observers said that that was deliberately misleading. But I wonder if you can talk about the facts that they were looking at and extrapolating”¦
A: I have no idea what the facts were. I did live in China for three years. Both before and after the 2010 election, I’ve pursued economic relationships between Maine and China because China is going to be the biggest market in the world, not only for what we produce but for what Americans produce. It’s going to be a huge market.
Our economy, built on natural resources, is an export economy. Our biggest industry is tourism. That’s an export business; we export experience. And the products of our natural resources, the Maine woods, the coast, our tourism, what me make, what we grow, are things that we need to sell. And to ignore the marketplace that’s going to be the biggest in the world — growing much faster than any other — would be stupid. And I’m just tired of us being stupid. I’m tired of an economy that is just stuck. We can do a lot better, and our resources are the foundation for it.
WW: And speaking of natural resources, to a more specific level: lobster. This past summer, the lobster industry saw prices collapse because of a glut of product. Had their been a new market”¦ what is the potential for expanding the market for lobster to Asia?
A: Five of us, right after the 2010 election, started a business to export lobster to China and for that matter to Europe, but we were focused on China. In the last couple of years, the market for lobster in China has exploded. And the problem we have all over the world is that an awful lot of people have no idea who Maine is, what Maine is, what makes Maine different. We’ve done a lousy job of developing a brand for the state, not just for lobsters, but for everything we make and grow, for everything that people come to visit us to do and to see.
Maine is a mythic state for a lot of Americans. But an awful lot of people around the world who are now becoming affluent enough to travel don’t know about Maine.
I saw in the newspaper, a lobsterman was quoted as saying, “Everybody knows about Maine lobster.” Well, no they don’t.
I can tell you that 99 percent of the people who live in China, they don’t know what Maine is. They don’t know what Maine lobster is. We teach them what it is, we’re going to have a huge marketplace for Maine products. And if we do that, the over supply we had last summer is going to have a much bigger market in which to be absorbed and that’s going to stabilize prices.
And I want you to feel sorry for the folks in Asia and particularly in China because for years, they’ve been living on a diet of Australian and New Zealand lobster. No claws, little tails, meat’s not very sweet. Think about those poor people!
WW: What else can be exported?
A: First of all, the way we built the market in China for lobster was not just to go there and tell the Chinese about it. We brought them here. These were the top officials at the largest food distribution company in China. We brought them here so they could see what Maine lobster was all about. How we harvested the lobster, that it is sustainable, that it is traceable, which are factors for them.
We took them out on boats to experience a lobster dinner. And this is where it ended up, in a carton, in Chinese labeled Maine lobster that people order from their websites. It’s a frozen, in the shell Maine lobster delivered to their door. [The distributors] produce videos to show how to cook Maine lobster.
When you engage in that kind of marketing effort, you bring them here, it works. We did the same thing for Maine-built boats. We got together with Hodgdon, Morris, with Hinckley, with Sabre and Back Cove and we brought to Maine Chinese journalists and photographers. We took them to see where the boats are built. It was spectacular.
We’ve had huge spreads with photographs and interviews in the biggest boating magazines in China; fabulous stuff. It’s beginning to build a Maine brand. And what they write about Maine-built boats, is they basically said, “These are the best boats in the world.” And oh, by the way, they also talk about how wonderful a place Maine is because they’ve been here. One fellow wrote, “Once you’ve been to Maine, Florida doesn’t seem so special.” (Laughs.) It’s true!
You can’t do it by just going over there and talking about it. You’ve got to have a strategy, you’ve got to have a plan and part of it is bringing people here.
And we’ve got develop a brand for all of Maine. We could do a separate for Maine potatoes and separate plan for Maine lobster and a separate plan for Maine wood products, another brand for tourism. That’s what we’re doing now. It doesn’t make sense.
If Virginia can be for lovers, which it’s been for decades; if we can all “heart” New York for decades, if pork can be the new white meat, then you’d think we could do something to market Maine around the world. And when so much of our economy’s built on exports, it’s really important to do that.
WW: And last question, if you’re elected”¦
A: You mean when? (Laughs)
WW: “¦ and you need a press secretary, would you hire Dennis Bailey[press secretary for Gov. Angus King, and whose The Cutler Files web site was critical of the candidate]?
A: Probably not. I believe in redemption, but boy, there’s a lot to redeem.
Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront.