Peter Fromuth is an attorney from Yarmouth.

In Maine, as elsewhere in America, the 2026 campaign is exposing a deep sense of democracy disabled. We are beset by problems that grow in severity and seem to exceed democratic institutions’ capacity to fix them. It will be the task of Maine’s next governor to prove that government is up to the task.

The kaleidoscope of challenges facing the state are unique in scale and intensity: unaffordable housing, inaccessible healthcare, costs for everything from childcare to elder care that hammer family budgets, climate change that is foreboding and transformative, rogue federal actors trampling citizen rights with impunity and much more.

To meet these challenges Maine needs a proven, trusted leader. Nirav Shah is that leader.

Shah came to Maine to lead the state’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At the time, Maine’s CDC was in bad shape, having lost critical personnel and programs under Gov. Paul LePage. Shah restored agency capacity, hired public health nurses and lab technicians and revived programs. The timing was propitious. COVID
surged into the U.S. the next winter and Mainers, the oldest Americans, were especially vulnerable.

What happened next is the stuff of legend. As much of America contended with social division and vitriol complicating leaders’ ability to mount a coherent response to the shape-shifting pandemic, Shah took a different tack. He knew that public health inflames passions and that where there is passion there is politics, something COVID demonstrated with a vengeance.

And he knew communication was imperative in a health crisis but rejected a conventional “white-coat” approach, choosing to be a ubiquitous, plain-speaking trust-builder.

Shah was far-sighted and creative. Nurses and doctors elsewhere dressed in garbage bags to ward off infection, but not in Maine. When the pandemic overwhelmed Maine’s modest medical infrastructure for testing and vaccinations, he and his staff improvised, at one point recruiting the National Guard to convert the Augusta Armory to a mass testing and vaccination site in 96 hours. When slow contact tracing and testing accelerated COVID’s spread, he partnered with a private company to overcome obstacles.

That “In Shah We Trust” refrain is extraordinary at a time when trust in government has never been lower, just 17% in 2023 according to Pew, compared to 71% in 1993.

Coinciding with vanishing trust is declining confidence in democracy’s ability to fix major problems. So it is fortuitous that Shah, who earned and kept the trust of a grateful state during the worst health scourge in Maine’s history, is eager to lead again, this time as governor. He is amply qualified.

During four years as Maine’s de facto crisis manager, Shah was immersed in the lives of Mainers. He saw their vulnerability to disease and uneven access to medical care, and the social, economic and cultural conditions that shaped their quality of life.

Because the pandemic reached into every part of that life — homes, workplaces, schools, elder-care facilities, hospitals, churches — in confronting it, Shah came to understand the vulnerabilities and aspirations of the people he served.

At a recent town hall, Dr. Shah shared a goal that is less well known. Before his years in public health leadership, Shah was an attorney, a background that makes him eager to check the trampling of personal liberties and disregard of state sovereignty by federal actors under President Trump.

He sees in Maine’s laws and constitution a muscular basis for protecting personal rights. If elected he is determined to use them to shield our liberties from federal encroachment.

For those with vision to see it and skills to grasp it, crises bring opportunity. Nirav Shah has already shown Maine he has those qualities in spades. Today we need him again.