Edmund Muskie

Edmund Sixtus Muskie (March 28, 1914 - March 26, 1996) was an American politican from Maine. He served as Governor of Maine, in the U.S. Senate, and as U.S. 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 Vice Presidential nominee in 1968. Before the 1972 election he was viewed as the frontrunner, the moderate establishment candidate, but innovations in the election prosess (the grassroot-participation through caucuses in Iowa, making it more liberal and anti-war than what Muskie was perceived to stand for) and Muskies inexperience in a nomination-battle (because he had built up the Democratic Party in his home-state he had never been in a Democratic primary before) lead to him losing his frontrunner-status, and when he won the New Hampshire primary by only a small margin, the momentum went to second-place, South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who did "better than expected", as they say. McGovern would go on to win the nomination before losing in a landslide to Richard Nixon.

Preceded by: Frederick Payne	U.S. Senators from Maine	Succeeded by: George Mitchell
Preceded by: Cyrus Vance	U.S. Secretaries of State	Succeeded by: Alexander M. Haig