Governor-elect Paul LePage named three Bristol men – Phil Congdon, Dana Dyer and Ralph Hassenpflug – to his 35-member transition advisory team Nov. 24.
The men, all retired businessmen with “30-40 years of business experience each,” Congdon said, met LePage in Aug. 2009 at a Waldoboro meeting of the Constitutionalists of Maine.
“[LePage is] an easy guy to work with,” Congdon said. “He’s bright. He’s got the right ideas. I think he’s going to do a tremendous job for the state of Maine.”
Congdon, Dyer and Hassenpflug met with LePage periodically during the campaign. “We’ve invested many, many hours over the last year and a half,” Congdon said. “We know our way from Bristol to Waterville very well.”
LePage also visited Bristol “a number of times,” Congdon said.
The transition advisory team will focus on “the things that are necessary to bring business into the state,” Congdon, a longtime businessman and, most recently, Director of Systems Technology Laboratories at Texas Instruments, said.
“It’s a little premature for now to speculate on what that’s going to be,” Congdon said. The team will attempt to help the LePage administration make existing regulations “more friendly to business” and seek to “pattern ourselves after states that are more successful with business.”
Congdon, 69, declined to speculate on the possibility of a future as a permanent member of the LePage administration. “No decisions have been made,” he said. “I’m looking at today and tomorrow and maybe into next week – that’s the extent of it at this point.”
Dyer, 70, is a retired United Airlines pilot and, currently, an instructor with the National Center for Constitutional Studies. In the 1990s, as part of a citizens’ initiative to improve USA-USSR relations, he traveled to the USSR to train Soviet pilots.
“I think it’s fair to say the three of us share the same values,” Dyer said. “We all are very much supporters of capitalism – a free market.”
“We just became involved because it was the right thing to do,” Dyer said. “We find [Paul and Ann LePage] to be delightful people. They’re real and sincere. What you see is what you get… My wife and I feel like Paul and Ann – they’re our friends.”
The reality of the business environment in Maine does not reflect the group’s shared values, Dyer said. “Our regulatory environment is definitely not friendly to business,” he said. “We are the last-most state in having a business-friendly environment.”
Without the change in the business environment necessary to attract new businesses to Maine, “There is no way that we can have an increase in available jobs and allow Maine workers to have an income just to pay for the necessities of life,” Dyer said.
Dyer, like Congdon, was noncommittal regarding the possibility of a future role in the LePage administration. “I don’t have any political aspirations,” he said. “I’m not looking for a position in his administration. I’m looking for a change in the business environment. I’m looking for an improvement in the welfare of all the people in Maine.”
The role of the transition advisory team is to enable the LePage administration to “hit the ground running,” Hassenpflug, 59, said.
“We can’t sit on our hands and start the work of the administration Jan. 5,” Hassenpflug said, referring to the date of LePage’s inauguration.
“I have been an entrepreneur pretty much all of my life,” Hassenpflug said. “I owned and ran a few international investment companies.”
For his latest venture, Hassenpflug moved to Bristol to open Conservative Concept Inc., a subsidiary of a German investment company.
If the LePage administration can succeed in their goals of improving the business environment in Maine, Hassenpflug believes Congdon, Dyer and himself can, through existing business relationships, help attract businesses to the state.
“We have to have a better economy in order to make things work,” Hassenpflug said. “There are a lot of companies that wouldn’t even consider doing business here.
“There’s so much red tape in the [Dept. of Environmental Protection and the Dept. of Health and Human Services]. Education is a mess right now. It’s extremely hard for a business to come in here and do something that makes sense.”
“I always hear Mainers complain” about children leaving the state after college, Hassenpflug said. College graduates leave the state to find jobs and many don’t return until retirement, he said. “That’s just not a good system.”
Job creation can help keep those children in the state, he said.
“Phil and Dana and I are really good friends – we have always had political conversations,” Hassenpflug said.
At the time the three men met LePage at the Constitutionalists of Maine meeting, the group was “a gathering place for people who wanted to get involved in politics without getting involved in party politics,” Hassenpflug said. “You might call it Tea Party.”
Hassenpflug no longer attends the group’s weekly meetings. “The Constitutionalists of Maine have gone in a totally different direction,” he said.
Hassenpflug, echoing Congdon and Dyer, didn’t appear to have a permanent position in the administration in mind. “We haven’t ever talked about that,” he said. “I am not really looking for a job. If Paul asked me to, I would consider it.”
Hassenpflug said he had “no explanation” for Bristol’s popularity with LePage. The town of 2300 now accounts for nearly ten percent of the LePage team.
“Maybe Bristol is the secret center of the universe,” Hassenpflug said. “There’s definitely something about this peninsula.”
