Moody has leg up in hometown

GORHAM – Shawn Moody recalled circling Gorham’s former racetrack as a 12-year-old passenger along for the ride on a horse-drawn racing sulky.

“You had to hold on,” Moody said.

Now, Moody, 50, a hometown favorite in Gorham, is running flat out in a crowded gubernatorial race. He faces Republican Paul LePage, Democrat Elizabeth Mitchell, and fellow independents Eliot Cutler and Kevin Scott. He’s put in $500,000 of his own money to help finance the campaign.

“I’m a very different candidate,” Moody said when asked why he thought he could win the race. “And Maine needs something different.”

Moody is the classic native son. His family has deep roots in Gorham, the town where he grew up. Although Gorham has evolved from rural to suburban, Moody – a successful, self-made businessman who runs five Moody Collision Center locations – is well recognized in town, where his campaign signs dot the landscape.

“Everyone in Gorham knows Shawn,” said his wife, Christina Moody. “We have strong Gorham ties. Both our families are from Gorham.”

Moody is making his bid to become the third Maine governor with roots in Gorham. Frederick Robie was the state’s 39th governor, from 1883 to 1887; and Percival Baxter, whose father gave the town a library and family home as a museum, was the 53rd governor, serving from 1921 to 1924.

Moody’s campaign headquarters is on Narragansett Street, where Clint Allen once ran a junkyard near the former racetrack.

His mother, Ann Moody, a Gorham native who encouraged her son to run for governor, said the effort has not changed her son – “not a bit.”

Around town, Moody is seen clad in a Moody for governor t-shirt and jeans.

“He doesn’t wear a shirt and tie,” she said. “I think Shawn exemplifies the average, hard-working individual.”

Moody’s wife and four children are involved in his gubernatorial race. “Without their support, it wouldn’t be as meaningful,” he said.

Danielle Moody, 22, a graduate of Bryant University with a business degree, schedules appearances for her father and is deputy treasurer of the campaign.

“She enjoys keeping her father busy,” Shawn Moody said.

Jimmy Moody, 20, a junior at Bates College, contributes campaign research and helps prep his father for interviews and events.

Ben Moody, 19, a 2009 Gorham High School graduate, works in the collision center business. Nathan Moody, 16, will be a Gorham High School junior this fall. He’s helped make campaign signs.

A full field of family is helping the campaign, and two even ran a race for Moody. A sister, Kim Moody of Cape Elizabeth, and a niece, Tasha Moody of Biddeford, competed in the recent Beach to Beacon in Cape Elizabeth while wearing Moody for Governor shirts and carrying campaign signs.

“The people in Gorham are so excited,” said Kim Moody, a professor of nursing at the University of Southern Maine.

A campaign volunteer, she attends functions on her brother’s behalf. “I’m one of the people who can speak for him,” she said.

Moody’s brother, Thad Moody, is vice president of operations for Moody’s Collision Center. He’s running the business while Moody runs on the campaign trail.

The Moody name is well rooted in Gorham.

According to Rodney Quinn, a local historian and an American Journal columnist, Moody’s grandmother, Ethlyn Moody, a Gorham resident, taught school in Westbrook. And, said Quinn, who is a 1941 graduate of Gorham High School, an aunt of Shawn Moody’s was his high school sweetheart.

The field at the old fairgrounds is now called Moody Field, named in honor of Shawn Moody’s uncle, Jim Moody of Scarborough, who grew up in Gorham and is retired as a former head of Hannaford, which granted use of the field it owns.

Helene Johnson of Gorham, a cousin in the Moody family, is the researcher who keeps family records. She said Moody’s family has been in Gorham for generations. Johnson said James Moody, who was Shawn Moody’s great-grandfather, lived on South Street and was a U.S. Customs employee.

For some people, Moody was their newspaper boy. He said he recalled being on his paper route at 5:30 a.m., coasting his bicycle without hands on the handlebars down the hill on School Street through today’s busy intersection, to the former Bob’s Esso on Main Street, where he’d spend a dime for a ginger ale.

Now decades later, Moody campaign signs are cropping up everywhere – on lawns at homes and businesses.

Peter Mason of PoGo Realty said support for Moody is “huge” in the Gorham business community.

“We know as a business owner that he’s watching our back,” said Mason, who once worked for Moody.

Gorham that police Chief Ron Shepard thinks people he has spoken with have been supportive of Moody. “He’s certainly a hard-working, dedicated individual,” Shepard said.

On Election Day, Johnson plans on driving senior citizens in Gorham to the polls. But Johnson isn’t waiting for November to get involved in the campaign. “I’m doing it on the phone,” Johnson said.

While busy campaigning, Moody recently found time to reminisce.

As a boy, Moody tinkered with cars at Allen’s. Moody told of starting his own garage business in 1977 when he entered his senior year at Gorham High School.

“I was paying taxes before I got a diploma,” Moody said.

Also in his earlier years, he bought another garage, a converted horse stable in Gorham Village, and lived in it.

In 1988 Moody bought the site from Allen and transformed it into an auto recycling business. The Moody campaign headquarters is nearby his collision center on the same street where he lived as a youngster.

Beginning as a teenager with one garage, Moody now has a Moody’s Collision Center in five Maine locations.

He recalled the way it was when he was a kid and the town’s old-timers like the horse trainer, George “Buddy” Reed, who gave him the sulky rides. And Arnold “Bruiser” Smith, who delivered the mail.

“Those are the people you remember,” Moody said.

And he remembered Clint Allen. Moody said Allen never bought a pack of cigarettes. “You ain’t got a smoke, have ya?” he recalled Allen asking people.

Like Allen, Moody often stopped for breakfast at the Paddock Diner on Narragansett Street and remembered its owner, Carl Libby. “That’s where everyone went,” Moody said.

Now, the campaign ride carries him far from Gorham and those memories. Thursday, Aug. 19, the trail leads to Bangor and Machias.

Although, he’s busy, Moody’s wife said he still finds time for the family and plays basketball with his boys in the yard at their home on Elkins Road.

“Just a regular guy,” she said.

Gorham’s Shawn Moody is at his campaign headquarters with his son, Jimmy Moody, and daughter, Danielle Moody, who are on his campaign staff. Staff photo by Robert Lowell