At age 20, Neal Corson was too young to vote in any election. However, even without his own vote, he won a contested primary for state representative in 1968. It was a contest that the Bowdoin College junior certainly hadn’t expected to win, especially after spending only $86. The next year he would be the youngest member of the Maine Legislature, leaving a mark that few first-termers ever do.
This mark was felt most profoundly as he led the movement that reoriented how the state of Maine legally defined adulthood. In a set of bills that Corson sponsored, he sought to lower the age of 2l as the one at which youths could vote, drink and enter into binding contracts. Though Corson’s legislation successfully reduced this age by only a year, it was the first step in a three-year progression by which the benchmark would be reduced to 18.
Maine has since joined the rest of the nation in restoring the 21-year-old drinking age, but the panoply of other rights afforded younger citizens remain on the books.
Given the enduring nature of the change Corson introduced, one cannot let this year’s 40-year milestone pass without catching up with the Maine legislator who successfully sponsored it. Now an attorney in Madison, the same mill town that originally helped send him to Augusta, Corson recently reflected on his motivation. “I was thinking people at 18 could be drafted and, if you have to go fight for your country, why can’t you at least have a choice about who is sending you off to fight?”
No doubt Corson’s interest in reducing the voting age also stemmed from the fact that he could not even vote for himself in the primary by which he won his party’s nomination.
After this upset win, Corson went door to door against the incumbent representative Democrat Joseph Belanger. This was a year in which Republicans were fighting the coattails of Ed Muskie as the Democratic vice-presidential running mate of Hubert Humphrey. In the end, Corson was as surprised to win the final election as he was to win the primary.
In Augusta, Corson’s initial adult rights legislation sought to lower the age to 19. But with both a knack for winning over his colleagues and an instinct for compromise, Corson later set his sights on a more incremental approach and the measure was amended to lower the age to 20. Though the move to expand adult rights by any age was then viewed as one that would help Democrats more than the GOP, the Republican dominated legislature endorsed it.
Corson’s House colleagues, on an overwhelming 117 to 18 vote, thus supported his position. The Senate soon followed suit. Elements of the new package of legislation lowering the drinking and contractual responsibilities of age went into effect in the fall of 1969, just 40 years ago. The voting age act was ratified in a November 1970 statewide vote, by a margin of 168,000 to 118,000.
When federal legislation lowered the eligibility to 18 for national elections in 1970, Maine voted to do the same thing for its state and local voting in 197l. Eighteen-year-old drinking became legal the following year, even though by 1977 the age was increased to 20 and, by 1981, it was pushed back up to the original 21.
As for the recent Amethyst Initiative to restore the 18-year-old drinking age on college campuses, Corson is not counted among those advocating such a change, noting the easy access younger teenagers had to liquor when the age was once that low.
Corson was by no means a one issue legislator. Among his other causes was extending from midnight to 1 a.m. the closing time for drinking hours in Maine bars. Another was allowing the sale of table wines in grocery stores at a time when beer was the only alcoholic beverage such businesses could legally sell. Also, not to be forgotten, was his successful bill to designate Atlantic Salmon as the official State of Maine fish.
After winding up his freshman term in the House, Corson returned to Bowdoin to win his undergraduate degree, and then spent four years as an Army infantry officer. This break from political life did not last long. Corson would, in 1974, win election to the Maine Senate. As chair of Legal Affairs, Corson helped shepherd through major changes in the state’s right to know laws.
By the end of his first year back in the State House, Corson was married, starting a family and decided he needed a trade. Law was an obvious choice and, after three years, Corson graduated first in his class at U-Maine Law in 1979. He could have written his own entry level ticket at the state’s largest law firms. Instead, he returned to Madison, where he has remained ever since. Corson recently observed, “I decided I’d rather be a small town lawyer than in some big firm. And I never regretted that decision.”
His practice in recent years has featured probate and real estate closings and a partner who handles family law. He’s the “go-to person” when it comes to complex real estate matters for the Upper Kennebec Valley region. Asked about the housing market’s present crisis, Corson says, “here is a case where I may be a Republican but I think the last couple of years have shown us that you have to have a certain amount of regulation in these banks and security markets. I mean these derivatives they were dealing with and these credit default swaps. It is the same thing as going to the casinos.”
Gambling is obviously not a pursuit of the talented, popular and respected central Maine attorney. But taking a chance on giving younger citizens adult rights does not appear to have been a bad bet for Maine or the nation.
Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@midmaine.com.
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