Angus King

I worked in the Senate in the 1970s. I worked for the Labor, Public Welfare Committee, and we had Ted Kennedy and my old boss, Bill Hathaway, and Walter Mondale.

I'm old enough to remember Richard Nixon. They called it the imperial presidency when he was refusing to spend money that Congress had appropriated.

My desire is to be as independent as I can be, as long as I can be, subject to being effective.

One of my life principles is that if something isn't working, doing something harder isn't necessarily going to produce the same result.

I had no intention of getting back into politics. I was teaching at Bowdoin and happily retired from politics.

It's hard running as an independent. I wouldn't have won the Senate election if I hadn't been governor. I had credibility. The hard part is getting voters to the point where they think it's thinkable and not a waste of time.

I've come to realize that an unencumbered U.S. senator is a profound threat to the whole system. It's somebody that they can't put in a box and say, 'Oh, well, we know how this guy is going to vote.'

I think that people have to reward those individuals who are prepared to work across the political aisle. I don't see any other way; if you don't talk to people with whom you disagree, you're never going to solve problems.

How can you work with someone if you went into their state to campaign against them?