Editor’s note: Fifth in a series profiling the candidates for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Maine Republican Olympia Snowe.

BY JOHN RICHARDSON

Additional Photos

William Schneider

The Portland Press Herald

Maine Attorney General Bill Schneider has an impressive resume: champion rifle shooter, West Point graduate, U.S. Army Green Beret, drug prosecutor, state legislator, anti-terrorism coordinator, alpaca farmer.

What often impresses people more is how he has overcome an accident that broke his back and left him in a wheelchair 27 years ago.

Friends and former colleagues say Schneider’s personal strength, as much as his resume, is the reason they called him when they heard that U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, would retire at the end of the year.

“I immediately thought of him,” said Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson, who hired Schneider as an intern prosecutor in 1990.

Schneider is one of six Republicans running for the party’s nomination on June 12 to replace Snowe.

His military and legal background is considered a strong platform for a U.S. Senate candidate. He also is a politician who is personally liked by his adversaries, as well as his allies.

Of the six candidates in the race, he raised the second largest sum of money in the first month of his campaign — $40,095 in March, according to most recent campaign finance reports.

However, Schneider has less name recognition than some of his opponents. He is not a natural self-promoter, and he isn’t the kind of partisan firebrand who attracts lots of attention in a crowded primary.

“Campaigning is tough for Bill because he can’t turn off the humble switch,” said Joseph Bruno, who served with Schneider in the Maine Legislature and is his campaign treasurer. But, he said, “he’s done things in his life other people only think about.”

Schneider grew up in rural upstate New York, where he was a two-time state shooting champion on his high school rifle team. He also was a good student, and turned down an offer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to go to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

“He was a great cadet, a good person. Everybody liked him,” said Ken Hamill, who was West Point’s rifle team coach and became a lifelong friend of Schneider’s. “He was meant to be successful. He’s got all of the attributes.”

Schneider was chosen captain of the West Point team, became an NCAA All-America marksman and was invited to try out for the Olympic shooting squad, though he didn’t make the team.

As a young Army captain, he commanded a guard post 15 feet from the North Korea border. He volunteered for special forces and became a Green Beret, commanding a special forces operational detachment A, or A-Team “a group of 12 of the best soldiers in the entire world,” Schneider says.

Schneider’s team included weapons, communications and medical experts and was trained to parachute behind enemy lines to train insurgent forces. There were no international wars to be fought in the mid ’80s, but Schneider, who speaks German and Russian, spent nine to 10 months a year deployed in Europe working with foreign forces.

“We got to go around the world doing important national security missions,” he said.

Five months in hospital

It was 1985, back on his Army base in Massachusetts, that Schneider’s military career abruptly ended. He was driving a van during Hurricane Gloria when it hydroplaned and crashed, smashing vertebrae in Schneider’s spine.

He spent five months in the hospital, most of it flat on his back in a bed that automatically tilted him on his side every two hours so he wouldn’t get bed sores.

Schneider speaks openly about the injury and being disabled, but doesn’t bring it up unless asked. He says he still feels lucky compared to some of the others who went through the military hospital.

“You take a lot of lessons out of it,” he said. “You really learn that no matter how bad it is, somebody’s got it worse.”

Schneider went to work as a project manager for a global security company before enrolling in University of Maine Law School in 1990.

He also bought a farm in Durham with his wife, Barbara, a former West Point cadet. The couple adopted a daughter and started raising alpacas, which they breed and sheer as a family business. He continues to shoot and hunt, even traveling to Africa last fall to hunt antelope.

Schneider started his law career as intern prosecutor in the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office. Anderson, the DA, remembers Schneider assuring her he could navigate around the old courthouse in a wheelchair and how she soon forgot that he was disabled. She also remembers his sense of humor.

“I had to ask him how tall he was for an ID badge. He said, ‘Six-two lying down,’ ” Anderson said.

Schneider’s ability to put people at ease helped make him an effective prosecutor, she said. “He’s just very nice to work with, but also he’s very bright and he’s very strong. He can hold his ground in a way that is totally non-offensive.”

Schneider became an assistant attorney general in Augusta in 1993, prosecuting major drug cases.

Political career

He was elected to an open seat in the Maine House of Representatives in 1998, and was chosen assistant House Republican leader the start of his second two-year term.

“When Bill spoke, people listened, and he’s the nicest guy going,” said Bruno, the House Republican leader at the time. “He sticks to his principles, but he’s not in your face about it.”

Schneider would have been in line for Republican House leader, Bruno said, but left the Legislature after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to serve as the anti-terrorism coordinator in Maine’s U.S. Attorney’s Office. He worked with law enforcement around the state on preparedness efforts and terrorism-related investigations.

Schneider also served on a national task force that evaluated the threat posed by each detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. “I learned an awful lot about al-Qaida,” Schneider said.

In 2010, Schneider was elected by the Republican-led Legislature to serve as attorney general.

One of his first acts was to join a multi-state lawsuit against President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on that case next month.

Earlier this year, Schneider signed onto a letter from several attorneys general objecting to an Obama administration requirement that all employers except churches cover contraception as part of worker health insurance plans.

The anti-Obama stands, as well as increased efforts to crack down on welfare fraud, earned him respect among Republicans and conservatives.

Democrats, women’s advocacy groups and others criticized Schneider for wading into political battles. “Those instances were more about politics than anything else,” said House Minority Leader Emily Cain, D-Orono.

Schneider said his stands as attorney general have been driven by the law and the U.S. Constitution. And he earned a reputation for independence in 2011 when he issued a strong opinion that one of Gov. Paul LePage’s original cabinet members — Department of Environmental Commissioner Darryl Brown — appeared unqualified to serve because of his interest in a land development business. Brown resigned.

Despite the political disagreements on health care, Schneider has worked well with Democrats on issues such as domestic violence, said Cain. “Generally, I think Bill has a reputation of being fair and thoughtful.”

John Richardson — 791-6324

jrichardson@pressherald.com

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER

Party: Republican

Age: 53

Residence: Durham

Family: Married (Barbara) and one daughter (Julia, 16)

Education: graduate of U.S. Military Academy at West Point, former U.S. Army Captain and Green Beret; law degree from University of Maine

Occupation: Maine attorney general; owns family alpaca farm; former U.S. prosecutor; former U.S. Army commander…

Political Experience: Maine House of Representatives, 1998-2002; assistant House republican leader, 2000-2002; Maine attorney general 2011-present