Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell learned very early in his life that there is an advantage to being the boss.
As Mitchell tells the story, he was barely of junior high school age when he was hired by his older brother, Robbie, for $2.50 a week to help clean the local Boys Club at night. But the teenaged Robbie soon found a girlfriend and spent hours on the telephone while George did all the work. Much later, George found out Robbie was getting $15 a week for the job and keeping $12.50.
Mitchell is now the boss of the Senate, arguably the No. 1 Democrat in the nation and the man who will help lead the Democrats in dealing with President Bush. How Mitchell handles that role comes to an immediate test this week as the Senate takes up Bush`s controversial nomination of John Tower for defense secretary, rejected in committee by the Democratic majority.
Mitchell`s standing as leader of the majority party in the senior legislative body already has been enhanced as the House leader, Speaker Jim Wright, has stumbled over questions of his ethics and his handling of the aborted congressional pay raise.
There`s already early speculation that Mitchell could be a formidable presidential candidate for the Democrats next time around, though he deflects questions on the subject by saying he is concentrating now on his current job. The 55-year-old Maine senator`s recent rise to national prominence was crystallized at the moment he took on Oliver North during the Iran-contra hearings last July. Under the hot television lights, the Marine colonel had mesmerized the committee, invoking God and patriotism for hours without successful challenge. Then Mitchell spoke.
”Of all the qualities which the American people find compelling about you, none is more impressive than your obvious deep devotion to this country,” Mitchell said. ”Please remember . . . that it is possible for an American to disagree with you on aid to the contras and still love God and still love this country just as much as you do. Although he`s regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.”
A former federal judge, Mitchell often acts like one, taking his time about answering questions or deciding tactics. Some Democrats suggest it was the combination of his skillful use of TV, thoughtfulness and ability to present Democratic views without appearing strident or doctrinaire that led to his election as majority leader.
Now in that job, facing more diverse questions, he believes he must be even more deliberate about his answers.
”More attention is paid to what I say now than to what I said before I was majority leader,” Mitchell said. ”So I have to give commensurate attention and concern to what I say, lest I make more than my human and normal quotient of mistakes.”
As majority leader, Mitchell will be the point man for the Democrats as they negotiate with Bush and the Republicans over the budget and other issues. But since time and traditions have changed, Mitchell cannot be the kind of leader that Lyndon Johnson was in the early 1960s, twisting arms and forcing reluctant coalitions. Instead, his technique more likely will involve dozens of personal conversations and deals slowly pieced together through painstaking work, not pressure.
”I did not abandon my convictions when I became majority leader,”
Mitchell said in an interview a few weeks after his election to the Senate`s top post. ”I did not leave my beliefs at the door when I became majority leader. At the same time, I am one of 100 senators. I could not impose my will on the Senate even if I tried to do so, and I don`t intend to try todo so. So, it`s a combination.
”Lincoln defined leadership as staying a little bit ahead of those being led but not so far ahead that you lose contact with them,” he said. ”The majority leader today operates in circumstances different from those which existed even two decades ago. The most formidable tool I have is the power to persuade.”
Harold Pachios, a longtime friend of Mitchell`s and an attorney in Portland, Me., says you can learn a lot about Mitchell by scrutinizing his basketball game. Always in the shadow of his three older star-athlete brothers, Mitchell made up for it with practice and concentration.
”He has one shot in basketball,” Pachios said. ”He takes it from behind the foul line. He`s smart enough and discriminating enough that he sticks to that shot. He shoots from right there-and he scores.”
Mitchell spent his early childhood in what he called a ”slum” section of Waterville, Me., called Head of Falls, a few houses on the wrong side of the railroad tracks along the Kennebec River.
His mother, Lebanese immigrant Mary Saad Mitchell, worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift as a weaver in a textile mill down the street. His father, the orphaned son of Irish immigrants and also named George, was a janitor at the college. The family eventually saved enough money to buy a house across the tracks.
By standards of the U.S. Senate, a legislative body loaded with millionaires, Mitchell is still a man of modest means. His financial disclosure statements show only a couple of relatively small bank accounts and no stocks or other investments. He recently bought two homes, one in Portland for $233,000 and a Capitol Hill townhouse for $327,000, both of which he owns in partnership with his brother-in-law in the family tradition of helping each other out.
Growing up in the Mitchell household, education was stressed over sports, and George was the child who always had his nose in a book. Sometimes, brother John recalled, it was a comic book, but it was always a book.
He still reads extensively and enjoys Boston Red Sox baseball, tennis, movies and the sym-phony. Divorced for two years, he occasionally dates but says there is no one special at the moment.
A true passion for Mitchell is cribbage. On a February weekend in Maine during a congressional recess, Mitchell carefully carved three hours out of a busy schedule for a family game at the Waterville home of his sister, Barbara Atkins.
He regularly wins these days, besting brothers John, Paul, Robbie and brother-in-law Eddie Atkins. This time, he took the brothers for $10-and kidded them about it all day. They reminded him, on the ride up to Bangor for a Sunday night sports banquet, that he once went a whole year without winning at cribbage.
Such losing streaks are rare for Mitchell-John Mitchell says if there is one word that describes his brother, it is ”resilient”-but when he first entered politics it looked like he could not win. He lost a bid in 1972 to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and two years later he was edged out in a three-way race for governor.
”George ran a `learning` campaign,” says Chuck Cianchette, a Maine construction company owner and Democratic stalwart. ”His TV was terrible. He`s always been extremely serious and the serious side came across, not the friendly side. I think George found he had to be a whole person, not just his serious side, on TV.”
Mitchell went back to private law practice in Portland, and many people figured he was washed up as a politician. But he was still learning.
With the backing of former Sen. Edmund Muskie (D., Me.), for whom he had once worked as a staff and campaign aide, Mitchell was named U.S. attorney by President Carter. In 1979, Carter appointed him a federal judge.
To this day, Mitchell says he ”really enjoyed being a judge.” He says there is ”a lot more excitement” in his present position, but ”I miss being a judge at times. I liked the order of the judicial process, the sense of fair rules.”
The tumult and occasional disorder of the Senate often require quick moves by its leaders. Muskie warns that Mitchell ”must be careful to avoid” thinking too long before acting.
In 1980, Mitchell did not hesitate to say he was interested when approached about filling the Senate vacancy left by Muskie`s appointment as secretary of state. But he turned to his family for advice on whether he should accept if it were offered.
With the blessing of his brothers and sister (though it was a split decision, John Mitchell recalled), and despite his love for being a judge, Mitchell agreed to serve out the remaining 1/2 years of Muskie`s term and then run for election.
He went to Washington but came home every weekend to make political appearances and see his wife, Sally, and daughter, Andrea, who remained in Maine. Family members and friends say life in Washington as a senator`s wife held little appeal for Sally Mitchell, a very private person who rarely gave interviews or made public appearances.
The couple held the marriage together until their daughter grew up and left home but quietly divorced in 1986. ”We`re friends,” says Mitchell. ”I talk with her regularly, I see her regularly.”
Pursuing his strategy of spending every free moment in Maine and tenaciously polishing his speaking style and manner, Mitchell overcame a 36-point deficit in the polls to win election to the Senate in 1982, beating Republican David Emery, a former congressman.
Last year, Mitchell (who kept on returning to Maine almost every weekend at the expense of foreign travel and other experiences) was re-elected with 81 percent of the vote, the largest majority of any Senate race in the country.
Mitchell carried all of Maine`s 674 voting precincts in November but one, a remote outpost in rural Aroostook County called Talmadge Plantation, which he lost 18-12. ”I wrote a letter to everybody in that town,” Mitchell recalled at a recent fundraising dinner for Scarborough High School students, ”to see what they think I`m doing wrong.”
He followed the letters with an appearance at a town meeting, where he found a few people who thought he was too liberal and one who berated him because he had been an officer in the Army, not an enlisted man. His visit apparently impressed most of the townspeople, however. He said several urged him not to pay much attention to the complainers.
In his successful race for majority leader of the Senate, Mitchell paid a great deal of attention to his colleagues` concerns, meeting individually with most of them. He also had a built-in constituency. As chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee in 1986, he was instrumental in returning the Senate to a Democratic majority.
And his now-polished TV image apparently helped, especially when contrasted to the stiff and somewhat pompous appearance of Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate Iran-contra committee and a contender for majority leader.
A third candidate, Louisiana Sen. Bennett Johnston (Mitchell`s tennis doubles partner), was the smart-money favorite late in the race. He is more in the Lyndon Johnson, back-room politician mold. But the Democrats went another way, choosing the Down Easterner`s public style over the Louisianan`s political dealmaking skill.
Johnston describes Mitchell as a ”fair-minded person. He`s not small, he`s not devious. He`s quite competitive, but not overreachingly so.”
Mitchell got 27 votes on the first ballot for majority leader, twice as many as each of his opponents.
Nobody but Mitchell had calculated that he would get that many votes in a contest that is decided by secret ballot. ”He counted right,” said his friend and confidant Pachios. ”He knew who would vote for him.”
How could he be so sure? ”People don`t lie to George Mitchell,” he explained.
Mitchell won praise for the way he handled his first controversial issue as majority leader-the 50 percent congressional pay raise that died dismally under the weight of public opinion. House Speaker Wright took most of the heat for mishandling the pay plan, leaving Mitchell`s reputation untarnished-except in his own estimation.
”The issue is so contentious and the process so difficult that it adversely affects all members of Congress, including myself,” he said in a recent interview as he flew around Maine in a five-seat plane.
The reputation of Congress is important to Mitchell, who talks about the merits of public service and says with believability that he decided to run for majority leader partially because ”I could do my job more effectively and make a contribution to our society . . . that I could not otherwise make.”
Pachios said the overwhelming ”problem about discussing George Mitchell as a politician is this: If you have a friend . . . not a public figure . . . and someone said, `Why do you like this person?` you would say, `He`s a really good guy, he`s fun to be around, he`s friendly, he cares about you, he doesn`t fly off the handle, he`s controlled, he has a great personality . . . he`s smart and he doesn`t go around bragging about himself.` You list all those virtues-and you know people like that-but when you say it about a politician, people say it can`t be true.”
