Dr. Nirav Shah, who led the state’s public health response to the COVID pandemic, announced Monday that he is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor during next year’s election.
A former head of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shah became the public face and voice of how Maine state government handled COVID-19. At the height of the pandemic, large audiences tuned into daily briefings to hear Shah break down the latest science, talk about vaccine availability and respond to questions.
In 2023, Shah was named principal deputy director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention — the second-highest position at an agency with more than 10,000 employees. But he stepped down earlier this year after President Donald Trump’s reelection and has been highly critical of the new administration's actions on public health.
Shah has been publicly exploring a gubernatorial run for several months but kicked off his campaign in Portland Monday morning. During an interview before his formal announcement, Shah said Maine is at a crossroads as it faces serious issues such as food insecurity, a lack of access to health care and affordable housing, and the closure of rural hospitals.
"We need someone who is going to run toward those problems,” Shah said. “Given the background that I've had in public service over the past 10 years, I believe I am uniquely qualified to address those challenges."
The 48-year-old joins half a dozen others seeking the Democratic nomination, including Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former House Speaker Hannah Pingree and former Senate President Troy Jackson. But Shah enters the race with significant statewide name recognition.
A resident of Brunswick, Shah now works as a visiting professor of public health at Colby College.
"As I think about my priorities — fixing housing, funding hospitals, feeding kids — all of those issues are ones that I gained tremendous experience around during the pandemic and would like to build upon as I go forward,” Shah said.
An epidemiologist, Shah had been director of the Maine CDC for just nine months when the COVID pandemic disrupted life in Maine and around the globe in March 2020. With his easygoing demeanor and ability to explain complex medical concepts, Shah quickly became a trusted authority as well as a source of reassurance for many Mainers during his daily and then weekly briefings.
But for others, he epitomized what they saw as government overreaction to the pandemic as schools, businesses and churches were initially forced to close their doors and medical professionals were required to receive COVID vaccines to keep their jobs.
Shah argues that his “deep background in managing crisis situations” will help him as governor, although he said he is open to frank discussions about the response to the COVID pandemic.
“It would be almost untenable, if not absurd, to think that in the midst of a multiyear crisis, every single decision that we made would have been spot-on in retrospect,” Shah said. “The key there is in retrospect. Are there things now, in retrospect, that I would have done differently? Without a doubt. Did we make the right decisions based on the availability of the data we had at the time. I believe we did, but I am absolutely open to that conversation.”
In fact, Shah said he was inspired to run for governor, in part, by what he sees as the Trump administration's attacks on public health. He accused Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of gambling with the nation’s health security by “dismantling the CDC” by large-scale layoffs, walking away from longstanding vaccine policies and other changes.
"Whether it's your right to access vaccines for your kids, your right to reproductive health care or your right to have a clean environment with clean air or clean drinking water, the federal government has abandoned its leadership,” Shah said. “And thus it is going to be up to states and state governments to take up that mantle to keep people safe and healthy.”
Maine will hold its 2026 primaries on June 9th. The other six Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for governor: Bellows, Jason Cherry, Jackson, Angus King III, Kenneth Forrest Pinet and Pingree.
