Politics
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This story will be updated.
Nirav Shah, who became one of Maine’s best-known public officials while leading the state’s health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, filed to run for governor Monday.
The former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention called reporters to a morning campaign event in Portland. He joins Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, House Speaker Hannah Pingree, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson and former clean energy executive Angus King III in the field looking to succeed the term-limited Gov. Janet Mills.
Shah’s campaign is an audacious bet that Maine voters will highly value his management of the pandemic in the absence of a defined record on any other issue. He also would have less time living in the state than any other governor in the modern era.
The trained doctor and lawyer grew up in Wisconsin and started his career fighting disease outbreaks in Asia. He ran Illinois’ public health agency under a Republican governor, and the state’s two Democratic senators called on him to resign in 2018 following a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak at a veterans home.
His career was revived by Mills, a Democrat whose administration picked him to lead the Maine CDC after the governor took office in 2019. He rose to prominence during media briefings in the early part of the pandemic, initially winning bipartisan plaudits for his communication skills.
Political polarization around management of the virus as the pandemic dragged on. Mills faced conservative resistance over business restrictions and vaccine mandates. Shah was the public face and first line of defense for many of those policies.
Overall, Maine fared relatively well during the pandemic. A 2022 study by conservative economists tied to President Donald Trump gave the state an A grade for keeping deaths low while mitigating economic harm. It was one of only six states to get that high mark.
