LePage insisted at the August 24 town hall that he kept a binder with every drug dealer in the state to prove his point.
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Gattine, the Press Herald notes, has been a longtime critic of LePage’s welfare reform proposals, and told the newspaper that he agrees that drug traffickers should be prevented from operating in ME, but that he doesn’t “really care what the color is of the people that are importing drugs into this state”, and that the treatment and prevention of drug abuse needs be funded in addition to law enforcement. Please forgive us – we made a awful mistake.
“It to me just highlights the Black Lives Matter movement”, Johnson said before an evening rally. LePage is being accused again of making racially insensitive comments, this time by saying photos he’s collected in a binder of drug dealers arrested in the state show more than 90 percent of them are black or Hispanic.
The editorial comes the same day LePage was embroiled in another controversy.
LePage left the voicemail for a Democratic Maine lawmaker Drew Gattine and repeatedly called him a “cocksucker”.
Afterward, LePage said the statement was a mistake, and told journalists, “If you want to make it racist, go ahead and do what you want”. I want to talk to you.
At a Friday news conference, while talking about a threatening and nastily worded voice mail he left for a state legislator (a man LePage called a “socialist co**sucker” among other things) he weighed in with his interesting views on black Americans and Hispanics, which seem to dovetail with similar views espoused in the recent past by Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump about Hispanics.
Asked by reporters to provide the binder, Mr LePage replied: “Let me tell you something: Black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers”.
Maine Democratic Party Chairman Phil Bartlett called LePage’s remarks a “threat” and said he is “clearly unfit to lead our state”. Drew Gattine on Thursday, according to the Portland Press Herald.
LePage apologized for the voicemail in a statement on Friday, but justified his reaction saying the label of racist is “the absolute worst, most vile thing you can call a person”. You – I need you to – just friggin’. “I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt”.
LePage said he will not resign from office. Drew Gattine. That message was responding to Gattine allegedly calling LePage a racist, which Gattine denies did not happen. Gattine said the governor didn’t apologize.
Democrat and former Rep. Michael Michaud, who’s gay, challenged LePage in 2014, but was defeated in a three-way race with independent candidate Eliot Cutler during an election year that was good for Republicans. “I called Gattine and used the worst word I could think of”.
After leaving the voicemail on Thursday, LePage invited reporters to the governor’s mansion, where he said he wished he and Gattine could face off in a duel.
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Maine Governor Paul LePage gets sharp-tongued with a lawmaker. “Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave”, LePage said at a town hall event. LePage’s office didn’t immediately comment.
