Shawn Roderick wants to stay in Maine. But he’s afraid he won’t be able to get a good-paying job when he graduates in 2006 from the University of Maine in Farmington.

Roderick has watched in frustration as many of his friends have fled the state to pursue careers. He is doing everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen to him.

On this Friday morning in early October, he has arranged a campus meet-and-greet with Brian Hamel, the Republican nominee for the 2nd Congressional District.

Hamel is the father of three daughters. Two are enrolled at the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono. One is studying elementary education; the other, social work.

He too is frustrated by the so-called brain drain. He says he wants his daughters to be able to find good jobs in Maine. He felt so strongly about it, he says, he decided to run for Congress.

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Hamel, 46, has never held elective office; has never even run before.

An accountant by training, he moved to Maine 10 years ago to oversee redevelopment of the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone.

By all accounts, that project has been a success.

He aims to duplicate that performance throughout the 2nd District, which has been hit hard by manufacturing-job losses as mills close their doors.

Hamel introduces himself and tells the small audience of students and residents about Limestone, where 10,000 military personnel packed up one day a decade ago, leaving the town desolate. That meant, he says, that more than 1,000 local residents lost jobs that serviced the base.

He talks about how he helped rebuild the local economy by assembling a team that brought to town 23 new tenants, both private and public, that spawned 1,200 new jobs. He also helped found the Maine Winter Sports Center, where he is board president, which helped put Limestone on the international map for skiing competitions.

“I know what obstacles are in front of businesses,” he tells this group. It is a mantra he repeated many times earlier on this morning during a walk through Farmington’s business district, introducing himself to local shop owners and office workers.

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Sitting in the front row at the university gathering, Lauri Sibulkin, a Phillips resident, listens then raises his hand.

“I like what you’ve said and I really like what you’ve done,” he says. “How are you going to get people like me to vote for you?”

People like Sibulkin are not Republicans and don’t plan to vote for the top of the Republican ticket.

“Do you have the guts to say, No, I disagree with you on that, Mr. President?’ ” Sibulkin asks.

It is the opening Hamel has clearly been waiting for.

Although he has always been a registered party member, Hamel calls himself an “independent Republican.” He tells Sibulkin he would vote his conscience and constituency, not his party.

“I’m not going to toe the party line because it’s the party thing to do,” he says. “I’m my own person.”

As a congressman, he would lobby President Bush to change aspects of the No Child Left Behind law. His wife, a fifth-grade teacher in Mapleton, complains regularly about the law, Hamel says.

Hamel does tout policy points from the Bush stump speech, including a medical savings account and tort reform.

But he splits with the president when it comes to some emotional and more personal subjects. He would not seek to overturn Roe v. Wade through a constitutional amendment.

He opposes cloning, but supports federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. His father lives in a nursing home curled in the fetal position most of the time, deteriorating from Alzheimer’s disease.

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Sibulkin’s vote, that of an independent in the 2nd District, is critical in the National Republican Congressional Committee’s hopes of picking up the seat, which it considers winnable. Michaud, a first-term congressman, beat Republican Kevin Raye in 2002 by just 4 percentage points.

Sibulkin says he is impressed by Hamel’s experience creating jobs and likes his answers on other issues.

The two met shortly before the event. Sibulkin owns an empty 19,000-square-foot former toy factor. His father recently sold the business, which had employed 40 people in nearby Avon. Sibulkin hopes to use the building to generate new jobs and, if possible, help launch new businesses.

Later, Hamel climbs into his minivan. He has logged 38,000 miles in the car over the past seven months, driving Maine’s 2nd District, the largest east of the Mississippi.

He is off to Winslow, navigating for his young driver, a student on a semester’s leave to work on the campaign.

There, he meets Waterville Mayor Paul LePage at the former Kimberly Clark paper mill, which Marden’s discount stores now uses as a warehouse. Other tenants, including a company that assembles Thule trailers, occupy the defunct mill.

The setting reminds Hamel of his work at Loring and, before that, the former Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, N.H. where he was director of finance, administration, marketing and real estate development from 1992 to 1994.

Born in Manchester, N.H., Hamel’s father had moved the family to Amesbury, Mass. Hamel attended public schools, then earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration at the University of Massachusetts with a major in accounting. He went to work for Arthur Andersen, the largest accounting firm in the nation, whose reputation was sullied two years ago by its link to Enron Corp.

There, he became a certified public accountant, before going to work for Congoleum Corp., which owned Bath Iron Works at the time.

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After two years at Pease, he got a call from former Maine Gov. John McKernan, who asked him to consider taking the Loring job.

Having heard it was considered “most difficult” in the base-closing industry, he declined the offer several times before agreeing to a site visit.

“I got off the plane and that was really the day that I fell in love with the people,” he says.

He likes a good challenge, he says.

When his brother-in-law dared him to run a marathon, Hamel couldn’t refuse. After crossing the finish line, he vowed never to run another. That was 10 marathons ago.

He hasn’t run competitively since 1996, but he’s up shortly after 5 a.m., five days a week, putting in five miles before breakfast.

While he’s discouraged by what he sees as Maine’s unfriendly business climate, he’s hopeful it can turn around, along with his low polling numbers so far.

After all, it’s been his business for the past 12 years to believe there’s no such thing as a lost cause.

Visiting a shop on Farmington’s Main Street, he spots a Boston Red Sox pennant on the wall behind the cash register.

“This is the year,” he says.