A Man of Independent Means : Politics: He has no ready-made base to muster, no party backing. But for Maine Gov. Angus King, that may be just what appeals to New England’s self-reliant voters.

Good morning, America! It’s 9 a.m. Do you know where your television is?

Unplugged, turned off, shut down, and with the remote control unit buried--or better yet, battery-free: This, anyway, is the official position of the governor of Maine, Angus King, the first--and most vociferous--state official to endorse national TV Turnoff Week.

Which is interesting, even ironic, since King spent 15 years hosting this state’s most popular public affairs television show. “Maine Watch” served as the 51-year-old multimillionaire’s springboard into a campaign that featured extensive use of the aforementioned electronic medium--and that saw him elected in November as the country’s only Independent governor.

King, however, sees nothing inconsistent in his weeklong anti-television imperial dictum. A week without the tube probably won’t kill any of his voters, he said, and maybe some will discover that “hey, reading a book isn’t bad, or hey, Mom and Dad aren’t bad to talk to after all.”

Besides, said King, staring dead-eye straight, as if speaking to an imaginary television camera, “I think part of the job of leadership is to talk about important things, even if they’re not governmental problems.”

Leadership is a word King uses with a certain cavalier confidence. It’s a word that he--like most politicians--lunges at, eager to claim as his own. In King’s view, leadership defines easily.

“I think people want someone who will do two things: One, listen, and two, make decisions,” King said. “The third piece is making it work.”

For any elected official, the last element is easier said than done. Making it work is even a greater challenge for an Independent.

“You don’t have a ready-made base to start with,” said Douglas Hodgkin, a professor of political science at Maine’s Bates College who has examined the phenomenon of Independent candidates. There are no partisan debts to settle up, Hodgkin said, no instant coalitions to muster.

In King’s case, Hodgkin added, “not only is he an Independent, but he’s an amateur at governing. He doesn’t know the moves. They don’t come naturally to him.”

Far from detractions, those traits may have enhanced King’s appeal to many voters in this notoriously self-reliant region--”the hotbed of independence,” as King describes Maine and its environs.

In the 1992 presidential election, Ross Perot edged out part-time native son George Bush in Maine to finish a narrow second to Bill Clinton. In nearby Vermont, Rep. Bernie Sanders remains the only Independent member of Congress. In Connecticut, former Gov. Lowell Weicker renounced the Republican party to run--and win--as an Independent. Just 20 years ago, not long after King settled in Maine as a young public service lawyer, Gov. Jim Longley triumphed without a party, and with a contentious anti-government platform.

“I think there’s a historic reason for the phenomenon,” said King, a former Democrat. “It goes right back to the founding of this country,” when New England was settled by “cranky fishermen and farmers who didn’t like to be pushed around. If you think about it, fishing and farming”--Maine’s traditional economic mainstays--”are both solitary pursuits. They’re independent.”

New Englanders, said New Hampshire political analyst Dayton Duncan, “are more standoffish, more fierce about their independence. They may not be more independent than other Americans, but they’re more likely to advertise it.”

As a result, said Duncan, who wrote about New England voters in his book “Grass Roots” (Viking, 1991), “someone who runs for office as an Independent in New England is not automatically categorized as fringy, or as a loony. Political idiosyncrasies are accepted, even respected.”

*

Nevertheless, King’s victory over Democrat Joe Brennan, a 30-year political veteran, and Susan Collins, a lesser-known Republican, did spark comment. At a governors’ meeting early this year, President Clinton sought King out, and without so much as an introduction, demanded, “How’d you do it?”

The President got the same earful King handed out in 12-plus months of stumping through town meetings, Rotary Club dinners and the all-important agricultural fairs. Partisanship is part of the problem, King said over and over. The interests of the state are what matter, not the interests of some party.

King stressed these same themes in “Making a Difference,” a book he wrote and self-published as part of his campaign. The face on the cover was already familiar to voters who happened to be viewers. And the candidate did share the surname of Maine’s most famous King (horror writer Stephen is no relation). But King’s pragmatic notions about government were less well-known. While campaigning, one man approached King and remarked, with apparent admiration: “I’ve been watching you on TV for years, and I never knew you had ideas!”

In a series of highly effective TV campaign spots, King hammered away at his ideas on everything from workers’ compensation (“Are we in a tunnel or a cave?”) to school choice (“the atom bomb of school reform”) to welfare, which he would like to abolish. His political philosophy, he insists, is clear and issues-oriented--that is, “I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

His approach to governing stems from his private-sector experience. Fresh out of law school, King practiced poverty law for a time, channeling his political idealism into projects such as banning billboards on Maine’s highways. But along with television, he drifted into business. During the gubernatorial campaign, he sold his energy conservation company, Northeast Energy Management Inc., for $12 million.

He is nonchalant about his wealth, noting that “stumbling over a couple of million bucks later in life is much better than making it when you’re young.” At this stage, “It seems unreal. The other day I wrote a check to the IRS for $3 million.”

But his financial success did allow him to pump $900,000 into his campaign, whose total budget was $1.6 million--a little more than $1 for each of Maine’s 1.2 million residents.

As governor, King likens himself to the CEO of a large corporation. “There’s no way that government can’t be managed the same way the Ford Motor Company is run, or L.L. Bean,” said King, who with his lean, athletic body and sandy mustache looks as if he might moonlight as a model for the state’s legendary purveyor of outdoor supplies.

“That means delivering services in our most productive, cost-efficient way. L.L. Bean’s job is to get boots to people. Our job is to get mental health to people.”

*

Assessments of King’s first 100 days in office were mixed, with some critics faulting him for acting less as governor than as “facilitator”--the same term King uses to describe what he views is a strength. Others deride him for failing to find a spot in his first budget for a much-discussed health insurance program aimed at the working poor.

“We’re still watching and waiting,” said Joe Ditre, head of a grass-roots group called the Maine People’s Alliance, whose members viewed King’s abandonment of the health care program as “a betrayal.”

At the Maine Center for Economic Policy, budget analyst Christopher St. John criticized King “for joining in the popular chorus during his campaign that (automobile) air emission testing was unnecessary.” The environment is a top priority here, St. John said: “Too many people’s livelihoods depend on it.”

Still, St. John praised King’s intelligence, his independence and his idiosyncrasies--such as urging his domain to give up TV for a week. King, for his part, said it was entirely logical to endorse the agenda of TV-Free America, a Washington-based group directed at school-aged children and their parents.

“The idea struck a chord with me because of the number of friends who had told me about their TVs breaking, and what it did for their families,” King said. “Sitting in front of the TV is basically a vegetative state, and I think it’s harmful. I don’t have any doubt that if the kids of America turned off their TV, their grades would improve.”

In his own home in Brunswick, a coastal community about 30 miles from the capital, “the rule about TV is zip, zero, nothing,” King said. He and his second wife, Mary Herman, remained in their farmhouse rather than moving to the governor’s mansion, he said, because they didn’t want to uproot 5-year-old Benjamin, separating him from his best friend, Harry Swan. Early this year, the family expanded again when they adopted a girl from India, whom they named Molly, now 16 months old.

*

His challenge to Maine residents to shut off their televisions was not universally acclaimed. Commercial television executives in Portland called his approach simplistic and gimmicky. The manager of one station groused that King “used television to get elected, and now he’s stomping on it.”

Adamant that his particular focus is children, King said there was nothing contradictory in his action. “It’s like Nixon going to China,” he said. “I’m in a position to talk about this. I know the power of TV. I know how it works. I have done it.”

In any case, “There were very few kids who waited breathlessly for Thursday nights so they could watch ‘Maine Watch,’ ” King said. Even his three sons by his first marriage, now in their 20s, “thought it was a total bore.”

It was his middle son, Duncan, now 22, who pushed his father to run for office. “He was tired of hearing me complain about the way things were being done,” King said.

But he insists that he has no aspirations beyond the Maine statehouse. “I really believe as a principle that the idea of our democracy was that ordinary people would take a break from their ordinary lives, and go and serve some time in public service--and then go home.”

And so, King said, “I want to do a good job as governor of Maine, and then I want to go home.”