Maine State Rep. Morgan Rielly ’18 Shows Us the State House

As a member of the Joint Standing Committee of Veterans and Legal Affairs, Rielly worked on the array of issues that fell within the committee’s purview, from those affecting veterans and members of the Maine National Guard, to marijuana and alcohol regulations, gambling, and campaign-financing and election laws.

He likened the reach of his legislative work to the liberal arts, especially the political science curriculum. “Serving in the legislature, there are similarities to attending a liberal arts college,” he said. “The government major at Bowdoin is like that, too. You can take political philosophy, constitutional law, counterinsurgency, Russian politics — a wide spread of issues. And just like here in the legislature, you have to have an open mind, be able to learn and adapt and be flexible.”

Going into the Legislature, Rielly was intent on realizing his vision of expanding community service across the state. He pressed for the creation of two new programs that were both approved by the Legislature last year: the Maine Climate Corps, focusing on climate mitigation and resiliency, and the Maine Service Fellows. The latter is a rural volunteer program akin to AmeriCorps. “We had young people working on housing issues, climate issues, public health issues,” Reilly said.

Last September, Reilly was honored for his work by America’s Service Commissions (ASC), a nonpartisan nonprofit that aims to elevate service as a strategy to empower communities and solve local challenges. “I think there is a real sense of searching for belonging that many people feel, and wanting to be part of something greater than themselves and to be part of working toward the common good,” Rielly said. He’s currently collaborating with ASC to expand national service programming across the country. (Read his op-ed.)

Pursuing a government major at Bowdoin was a natural path for Reilly. As a high school student, he was interested in local politics and served on Westbrook’s city council as a student representative. “Bowdoin’s government department is renown, and has a lot of incredible professors,” he added.

He concentrated on international relations, thinking he’d like to be a foreign service officer, a stance that shifted following the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that led to the death of a young woman. He watched the scenes unfold on the news while volunteering with Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan, as a McKeen Center Global Citizen’s Fellow. 

“It wasn’t until the summer after my junior year, when I was set to come back, that I watched Charlottesville happen, and I recognized that my country doesn’t need me abroad, it needs me back home,” he said. “After senior year, I started to think about how can I serve and make my piece of the world better, not just for myself but for the people around me.”

He returned to Westbrook where he ran unopposed for his seat in 2020 while working in a factory making personal protective equipment.

Also influencing Reilly’s trajectory of public service was a book he published in 2014, Neighborhood Heroes: Life Lessons From Maine’s Greatest Generation, based on interviews with WWII veterans. (He is also co-author of a second book, Dear Maine: The Trials and Triumphs of Maine’s 21st Century Immigrants. )

“Each profile was centered around a life lesson I got from each man and woman I spoke with,” Rielly said. “What connected all their stories was a life of service — not necessary their service during a war, but the service they led after they returned home, from volunteering with nonprofits to running for office. That resonated with me.”