One thing is sure about Joe Brennan, who died last week at age 89 — he was like no other Maine politician, before or since.

Brennan was the first governor from Portland (1979-87) since Percival Baxter nearly 60 years earlier, his temperamental opposite — a working class scrapper vs. Baxter’s polished, upper-crust style.

Governors from Portland are viewed with suspicion by the rest of the state. It’s not only Maine’s largest city and increasingly its hub of growth and prosperity; Portland long nourished aspirations to be like Boston — center of everything, including state government.

Even in the 20^th century, Portland tried to wrest the capital back from Augusta. It was only construction of a grand new State House over the bones of the old one that finally settled things; Portland still has the Supreme Judicial Court, unique among the 50 states in that it is not based in the capital.

I arrived in Maine midway through Brennan’s second term, and the press — larger and funnier than it is today — had dubbed the administration “the Brennanistas,” a coinage mixing Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua with the “Irish mafia” of his Blaine House team.

To be sure, rough guys worked for Brennan, notably the intimidating Davey Redmond, but there were formidable Republicans as well, such as Senate President Joe Sewall, who held sway during Brennan’s first term.

My early impressions were mixed. It was only years later while researching a book that I appreciated what a solid performance Joe Brennan turned in.

As a Democrat, Brennan had a big heart but was tight with a dollar — an unusual combination, then as now. He fought fiercely for working Mainers who’d grown up in poverty much as he had. Son of a union longshoreman, he never strayed far from his birthplace, dying just a few blocks from the Kellogg Street tenement where he grew up.

During a period of record inflation, he didn’t stint in cutting programs he didn’t think were effective. Occasionally, he was too tight; a rare expressed regret in later years was letting a minimum wage increase take effect without his signature, rather than signing the bill.

And he hired smart young cabinet commissioners and gave them space to work. Two of the most notable were Michael Petit at the then-Department of Human Services and George Campbell at Transportation, the two largest state agencies.

Campbell, a young town manager, succeeded a highway engineer DOT who’d resigned when Brennan, having taken a no-tax pledge for his first term, refused to seek a 2-cent gas tax increase.

Reelected overwhelmingly, Brennan — sans pledge — put a nickel on the gas tax, setting off a construction boom that, for a time, improved roads statewide, especially in rural areas.

Brennan would have seen no irony that his policies benefited rural towns disproportionately. Faced with soaring health care costs, Petit at DHS made a deal with hospitals: They started receiving full, predictable Medicaid payments but would have to submit to rate regulation.

It worked. Increases were lower than nationally as health indicators improved, and the Health Care Finance system helped preserve rural hospitals.

Unfortunately, hospitals got the next administration to repeal the system. Hospitals have now consolidated in Bangor and — especially — Portland, and charge whatever they want; only Maryland still has effective rate regulation.

So it was with the University of Maine System, which Brennan’s predecessor, Jim Longley, tried to strangle. Brennan commissioned a thorough study that better aligned the seven campuses, and with surplus revenues provided a substantial “down payment” enabling trustees to lower tuition.

No governor since has done anything similar, and the university system — a traditional economic engine in small states — has still not achieved its potential.

Brennan had blind spots — notably Maine’s Indian tribes. He resisted the 1980 Land Claims Settlement that provided major federal funding, and set a tone of contention in the Tribal-State Council that’s regrettably prevailed to this day.

No one could credibly accuse Brennan of self-interested policies. He saw no higher calling than public service and never “cashed in,” as so many in Washington have done.

Even his later unavailing runs for office — nominated twice more for governor and once for U.S. senator – “when I ran for the thousandth time,” as he joked — can be attributed to this conviction.

He wasn’t shy about challenging entrenched power. He was a fierce critic of the Vietnam War, and withheld National Guard troops from Central America in opposition to Reagan administration policies — a stance he continued during two terms in Congress.

His political personality, like his governing style, could be summed up as tough, but fair. We would do well to find such a governor again.

Joe Brennan will be missed. He definitely cannot be replaced.

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