Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. He welcomes comment at [email protected].

I have the greatest respect for Dr. Nirav Shah. Shah came to Maine in 2019 at the outset of the Mills administration as the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and rebuilt an agency demoralized by Mills’ predecessor through staffing cuts and neglect.

A year later, a “mysterious virus” he flagged for legislators became the coronavirus pandemic, the worst global health crisis in 100 years. Shah stepped to the fore, hosting daily briefings, with Mills and DHHS Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew as his frequent “guests,” providing a reassuring presence that built an audience far beyond Maine.

In a dark time, Shah used science and perspective against fears and rumors the virus spawned. Now, he’s mulling a run for governor in 2026, potentially adding an intriguing profile to a hotly competitive race.

Shah worked in a similar CDC post for a Republican governor in Illinois who lost reelection. His subsequent availability to a Democratic governor in Maine created a bipartisan aura — though Shah insists his work was nonpolitical.

It’s hard to know how to appeal across party lines at the moment, but Shah has as good a chance as any. He can engage people while respecting their beliefs. When I interviewed him, he was always precise and concise, explaining complex matters in readily understandable language. For communications skills, Shah could well rise to the top of the field.

Yet as he returns to his adopted state after two years as Joe Biden’s deputy CDC director, there are reasons why Shah may not find a high-level political race the best use of his talents. Becoming a good governor is a hard-to-define mixture of energy, talent and experience. Shah doubtless possesses the first two, but experience is questionable.

Mainers bear a fierce allegiance to their traditions; only once have they chosen a governor not born here. When Angus King was elected in 1994, he’d spent his entire adult life in Maine and few seemed to know or care that he was born in Virginia.

King spent time working in a U.S. senator’s office, as a Pine Tree Legal attorney, a public television host and entrepreneurial business owner who did well enough to finance his own campaign. He ran as an independent in a year that neither major party nominee roused enthusiasm.

Even experienced Maine natives from other professions, including Dan Wathen, who had just retired as chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, and David Flanagan, longtime president of Central Maine Power, saw their bids fall flat when they announced for governor. Politics is a tricky business all its own.

Shah says that if he runs, it will be as a Democrat — a race against several very qualified candidates who announced months ago, and perhaps already the deepest Democratic “bench” in a governor’s race since 1974, when a four-man primary featured George Mitchell and Joe Brennan, a future U.S. Senate majority leader and governor. All of the leading Democrats for 2026 have a plausible claim, and experience does matter. Is five years of residence, excluding Shah’s time in federal service, enough?

There’s one position for which Shah is impeccably qualified, and where he could make a real impact: commissioner of Health and Human Services. It’s a post that’s increased in importance since the pandemic, with a highly privatized, malfunctioning health care system infuriating even practitioners.

Add that to an incompetent secretary of health and human services in Washington, and Maine has a pressing need. Shah minced no words in an interview with the Press Herald about the performance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He called the much ballyhooed emphasis on food dyes and flavorings “small ball” and said Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative has “an appearance of science, but it’s really a wellness grift.”

Shah also condemned Kennedy’s decision to defund continuing mRNA vaccine research — contrasting with the first Trump administration’s successful crash program to develop a COVID vaccine. “It was a foolhardy decision,” he said. “You want as many horses in the race as possible when researching vaccines. We are less safe when taking that horse out of the race.”

This physician-activist perspective is a welcome breath of truth amid the contaminated environment created by the second Trump administration. One can imagine Shah leading a coalition of state health commissioners advocating sound science and serious, structural health care reform, a bulwark against Trump administration heedlessness.

Rebuilding the consensus we once had around America’s health will be an arduous task. Dr. Shah may be just the one to lead the way.