Local Spotlight: Richard Rhames

Although he wears many hats, Richard Rhames of Biddeford could probably best be described with just three words: authentic, passionate and persistent.

Note: This is a largely unedited interview that contains coarse language, which some readers may find offensive.

Rhames, 78, is a well-known commodity at City Hall. He is an outspoken member of the public, a former city councilor and a tireless member of the both the city’s Conservation Commission and Cable Television Committee.

Over the last four decades, Rhames has developed a reputation as someone who means what he says, and says what he means. He rarely pulls punches when criticizing local leaders and their policies; and he is always willing to fight even when he knows the odds are insurmountably stacked against him.

Today, Richard and wife Pat own and operate Shady Brook Farm on outer West Street. That 80-acre farm has been in Rhames’ family for three generations, and the land represents one of the last family-owned farms in the area.

Rhames, who serves as president of the Saco Valley Land Trust, laments the loss of small farms, but keeps his hands firmly on the plow in a time when farming has pretty much become a corporate enterprise.

“If farming was easy, everyone would do it,” he said with a wry grin. “Let me assure you, nothing about farming is easy.”

To the casual observer, it seems that Rhames is always willing to do things the hard way. He dismisses the notion of going along to get along.

Sticking to his principles and beliefs has cost Richard some friends and his seat at the table of local power, where he was widely considered a thorn-in-the side of the Chamber of Commerce types.

Richard was an at-large member of the Biddeford City Council when the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred. Within days, the council had decided to place miniature American flags along the council dais. There was one flag in front of each councilor.

At the beginning of the next council meeting, Rhames used his arm to move the flag to his side as he was spreading out paperwork. A fellow city councilor expressed outrage, and a reporter from the Journal Tribune wrote that Rhames had “shoved the flag away.”

The public was largely unforgiving. It was a time of hyper-patriotism and there was little tolerance for anything deemed to be “un-American.”

Rhames had already been long criticized for his questioning of U.S. policies in the Middle East, including Iraq. He was unapologetic. Just a few weeks later, Biddeford voters showed him the door.

“I never shoved the flag,” he said. “But the damage was done. The political class was not happy with me, and they gladly grabbed onto a piece of red meat.”

Rhames never stopped sharing his political views. He wrote a regular column in both the Journal Tribune and the Biddeford-Saco Courier. Much of his written work focused on labor issues, workers’ rights and conservation issues.

He is a long-time advocate for single-payer healthcare and says if the city is serious about the issue of affordable housing, the best weapon to bring to that fight is municipally-mandated rent control.

He is also a fairly well-known musician, playing rhythm guitar with two different bands throughout the area.

What got you involved in local government?

“It was the airport. Back in the ‘70s, they started pushing a plan to build a cross-wind runway. They intended to buy the George Fogg property, which was between the paved part of Granite Street Extension and the town line. That’s always been the [expletive] dream - - the cross-wind runway.

“I started going to Planning Board meetings and council meetings. I was probably the only guy in town who had actually read the master plan. I mean, who are we kidding? Master plan? F--k that.  It was supposed to be a done deal. The powerful people, the people with connections; it was what they wanted.

“Because Mayor [Babe] Dutremble was pissed that some of his political friends had been moving forward behind his back, he shut it down all by himself. It was in the papers, the York County Coast Star and the Journal.

“Then about 10 years later, in the mid-1980s, it came back again, with a vengeance. The new plan was even more grandiose. It would have Biddeford become a reliever for the Portland Jetport. We were going to get the freight shipments; it would have included 60,000-pound aircraft. They dream big, here in Biddeford. The FAA loved it, you know? And they thought they had it.

“We fought it. They wanted to change the zone to Industrial. That’s back when wetlands were just dismissed as swamps. We got some other people riled up and involved, and at one of our first neighborhood meetings we came up with a name at the supper table: NOISE (Neighbors Organized In Stopping Expansion).”

You have often complained about the fact that there is so little public participation in city meetings.

“In order to know what’s going on, you got to be there all the f---ing time. And you’ve got to have no life, which is ideal for me. (Laughs)

But it’s not just local issues that get you fired up.

“Yeah, well you know. If I’m pissed about something, I’m going to stand up and say something. I don’t know any other way to be. I have this bad attitude, right?

“When I was younger, I could have gone back to teaching (public school). I was no longer 1A. I didn’t have to fight the draft anymore. When I grew up, I remember watching television and all the incessant propaganda. The whole mantra: the Russians are coming; the Russians are coming. The constant beating of the drum. The propaganda. The free world.

“I grew up in the ‘60s. I mean we were all drinking from the same propaganda trough, but it was the draft that literally forced a lot of young people to start recognizing what was happening, even though I went to a little white-bread Midwest college.

“I was as unquestioning as anyone else back then, until all this shit started happening. We had access to libraries and learning opportunities. We did this bus caravan thing. We went to Midland, Michigan, the home of Dow Chemical.

“We were all white-bread kids; nobody had long hair; we were wearing suits at the march and the locals hated us because we had a rally in the park (Laughs).

“But we were earnest, and we had been looking into this a little bit. Most of us had some idea about the history of southeast Asia; how we took over for France in Vietnam. There was a history there that the newspapers never reported, but we came to understand that it was really f---ed up; and why would anybody want to die for that?

“But to openly resist meant costs. Most of us were banking on what we were taught since elementary school: that we had some kind of career waiting for us in regular society.”

Do you ever get tired of fighting the good fight?

“I’m pissed, and I have been pissed for a long time. I don’t find that hope is terribly motivating. You gotta be pissed. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right what we did on the grand scale.

“Even today, as much as the whole thing in Palestine is wrong, the Israelis, the Zionists, are pikers compared to the United States of America. The body count that we have rung up during my lifetime is really f---ing impressive.

“Nobody talks about it, but if you want somebody killed, call us. We’ll either provide you with the weapons; better yet, we’ll do it ourselves. We’re really good at that. Spending a trillion dollars a year on the military? That’s easy.

“But if you speak up, they come after you. It’s dangerous, Randy. Why did they come after me the way they did after 9/11? Why have they come after me, including you, . . . why was I such a target? You know? This unassuming clodhopper with the big words and all that shit, you know? Why was I the target?

“Because I was willing to stand up and say this shit.”

What do you think about all the changes as Biddeford becomes a destination community?

“We were last in line. We had the incinerator [MERC]. They stopped pulping in Westbrook and that city began to gentrify almost immediately, and Westbrook isn’t placed nearly as well as we are. Against all the political odds . . . and the only reason that we got rid of the incinerator is because they wanted to leave . . . they [Casella Waste Systems] were ready to go.

“It always kills me, I guess it shouldn’t -- when Alan [Casavant] expresses surprise, disbelieving; and talks about how quickly the shift started, how much things changed once we got rid of MERC. It would have happened anyway, but you had this whole Heart of Biddeford gentrifying, national advertising campaign. The whitewashing of Biddeford culture.

“We created a myth of what Biddeford is in order to entice new people to come here and exploit us, which they are doing.

“But we haven’t learned. The political class is still bending over backwards to subsidize private development.

“I keep telling them: Isn’t it time to pump the brakes a little? You don’t have to beg people to come here anymore. There’s no incinerator anymore. We’ve got all this ocean frontage, river frontage and all these old buildings from when Biddeford was the Detroit of New England.”

You are one of the most strident and vocal supporters of public access community television, even as the city slides further away from televised meetings to online forums.

“When we started with public access, there was some good stuff on the channel, but the political class was always uncomfortable. It frightened them because they couldn’t control the message.

“We used media for public education, to pull back the curtain and give information that you really couldn’t find anywhere else. It was good stuff, and I was never home.

“We were doing advocacy for ordinary people. You don’t generally find that on the airwaves. Who wants to do research to make a point? T.V. is something done to you now.”

Any thoughts on running for office again?

(Sighs) “I’m too old. My time is over. I understand how the world works. I’m not the one. I’m just not the one.”

Randy Seaver is a cranky, nearly insufferable malcontent living in Biddeford. He is a retired newspaper editor and the principal of a small strategic communications consulting firm. Randy Seaver can be contacted at randy@randyseaver.com.