Ralph Owen Brewster was born in Dexter, Maine, in 1888, a direct descendant of Mayflower leader William Brewster. He graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin, spent a year as a high school principal in Castine, and earned a Harvard law degree in 1913 before practicing in Portland and helping lead the Committee of 100 to replace the ward system with a city manager. Elected to the Maine House in 1916, he resigned to enlist as a private in World War I and rose to captain. In the 1924 governor’s race his opponent accused him of Ku Klux Klan backing. He denied membership, but Klan members worked for his campaign, and former Governor Percival Baxter publicly condemned him.

After losing a 1932 House race to John Utterback and contesting the result, Brewster won the 1934 rematch and later moved to the Senate, serving on the Truman Committee and the Pearl Harbor inquiry. In 1947, as chairman of a special committee on war contracts, he targeted Howard Hughes over $40 million for aircraft including the Spruce Goose. Hughes accused him of serving Pan Am and testified that Brewster offered to drop the probe if TWA merged with Pan Am. Brewster stepped down from the chair to testify and faced questioning from Hughes. In 1952 Hughes put $60,000 behind Governor Frederick G. Payne, who beat Brewster in the primary. Brewster died of cancer on Christmas Day 1961.

• In 1935 he accused New Deal lawyer Thomas Corcoran of threatening the Passamaquoddy tidal power project to win his vote.
• More than 200 residents of Lubec hanged him in effigy with a sign calling him a double-crosser.
• His alignment with Joseph McCarthy set him against fellow Maine Republican Margaret Chase Smith.
• He resigned in December 1952 and later served a term as president of the Christian Science Mother Church in Boston.
• Alan Alda received an Oscar nomination for playing him in Martin Scorsese’s 2004 film The Aviator.