Former Portland cop and Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion fancies himself as Maine’s next governor.
After all, the law-school grad and former state senator tried once to reach for the stars that shone so promisingly over the Blaine House.
Just because Dion, 70, now mayor of Maine’s largest city, lost big-time doesn’t mean he’s given up on the dream.
Of course he hasn’t.
Like a longtime congressman and failed 1976 presidential contender from Arizona – Democrat Morris Udall – famously said, once the urge for the highest political office “gets into your bloodstream it can be removed only by one substance, embalming fluid.”
The Blaine House is still on Dion’s radar, evidence of his longtime, so far mildly successful, one-step-at-a-time, public-service career.
Dion is now halfway through his tumultuous term as mayor of a city besieged by curbside drug addicts, so-called homeless people in sleeping bags laying in the doorways of upscale five-star restaurants…the list is endless.
He was featured this week in a 45-minute interview on NewsCenter Maine described as a “frank conversation in his City Hall office about homelessness, housing, affordability, public safety, construction zoning, rent control, and the minimum wage.”
The Lewiston native who is now at the top of the political food chain in Maine’s liberal beachhead boasted to WCSH about helping place hundreds of people in “stable housing” in coordination with local non-profits.
In the same TV interview, Dion downplayed a recent downtown stabbing at the hands of a street person as being “what could happen for someone who’s left to fend for themselves on the street, who may be suffering from mental illness.”
But then he quickly pivoted to ”it’s not clear yet from the investigation if the suspect falls into that category.”
Dion graduated from Lewiston High School in 1972, later moving to Portland where he became a ranking police officer in his 21 years with Portland Police.
He has a bachelor’s in criminal justice from University of Southern Maine, a master’s in human-services administration from Antioch University New England and a law degree from the University of Maine School of Law.
Dion, elected sheriff in 1998, was criticized during his 2002 reelection campaign for using a county credit card and attending law school while carrying a tax-financed police badge.
After being re-elected then and 2006, Dion left county government.
Rather than seeking re-election as sheriff, he successfully ran for a seat in the Maine House.
He was elected in 2016 to the Maine Senate, where he served one term. Dion ran for governor in 2018, placing fifth, with just four percent, in the seven-candidate Democrat primary and losing to the now-incumbent, Janet Mills, who won with 33 percent.
He then won a seat on the Portland council in 2020 with less than 40 percent of the vote.
Three years later Dion announced his intention to run for mayor of Portland.
During his campaign, he promised to continue supporting a policy of forcibly removing homeless people from public spaces, stating “the sweeps will continue.”
He won, but again with less than a majority, forcing not just one but four runoffs.
Dion barely became mayor, winning by only three points.
The Maine Morning Star described Dion as “Portland’s version of a law-and-order candidate.”
In his acceptance speech Dion said that he thought “voters identified with safety” as a deciding issue in the race, the Star reported.
“He touted public safety across his campaign, running as a softened, liberal Portland version of a law-and-order candidate and citing his experience in law enforcement,” according to the Star.
