Edmund Muskie

Edmund Sixtus Muskie (March 28, 1914–March 26, 1996) was an American politican from Maine. He served as Governor of Maine, as a US Senator, and as US Secretary of State. He was noted for being one of the first--and leading--environmentalists in the Senate.

Muskie was born in Rumford, Maine, the son of Catholic Polish immigrants. He graduated from Bates College in 1936, and Cornell University Law School in 1939 before serving in the United States Navy during World War II.

After the war he was instrumental in building up the Democratic Party in Maine. Maine had traditionally been a Republican state, notable for being one of the two states that Alf Landon carried against Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.

He served in the Maine House of Representatives before being elected Governor in 1954. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1958, defeating incumbent Republican Fred Payne and won reelection in 1964, 1970, and 1976, serving until his resignation on May 7, 1980 to become Secretary of State. He served in this capacity from 1980 to 1981 during the Jimmy Carter administration, following the resignation of Cyrus Vance.

He was the Democratic Party's nominee for Vice-President in 1968. Before the 1972 election he was viewed as the frontrunner, a moderate establishment candidate, for the Democratic Presidential nomination. But the grassroots Iowa caucuses made the early runnings more liberal and anti-war than Muskie's perceived positions, and Muskie's perhaps surprising political inexperience - having built up the Democratic Party in his home state, he had never been in a primary battle before, and his performance was criticized - began to show. Muskie lost momentum, and after winning won the New Hampshire primary by only a small margin, saw his lead fall to South Dakota Senator George McGovern. McGovern would go on to win the nomination before losing the election in a landslide to Richard Nixon.

See also

• U.S. presidential election, 1968
• U.S. presidential election, 1972