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AUGUSTA, Maine — A crew removed the Maine State House portrait of former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell in the latest example of fallout for the legendary political figure following new revelations about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The Maine State Museum took the portrait down on Friday following a request roughly two weeks ago from Senate President Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, and House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, Suzanne Gresser, the Legislature’s top administrator, said.
Mitchell’s portrait went up in the Hall of Flags, a second-floor area outside the governor’s office, in 2014. It hung in a prime area alongside those of Sens. Margaret Chase Smith and Edmund S. Muskie as well as William King, Maine’s first governor and the key figure in the statehood battle.
“For me, this really is dancing with the stars,” Mitchell said at the time, according to The Portland Press Herald.
It will be replaced temporarily with a portrait of Gail Laughlin, who lived from 1868 to 1952 and was the first Maine woman to practice law and one of the first to serve in the Legislature, serving in both the House and the Senate between 1929 and 1941.