He later left an expletive-filled voicemail on the answering machine of a lawmaker who the governor believed called him a racist.
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Meanwhile, LePage says he will not hold a public a town hall meeting as planned in Gattine’s hometown of Westbrook.
In a regularly scheduled Tuesday morning radio interview, LePage mulled the idea of stepping down, saying that he was not necessarily committed to finishing his term and adding, “It’s one thing not to have one party behind you, it’s another thing not to have any party behind you”.
But a few hours later, the governor took to Twitter to deny resignation rumors, writing, “to paraphrase Mark Twain: ‘The reports of my political demise are greatly exaggerated'”.
State Senate President Michael Thibodeau and other Republican legislative leaders late Tuesday convened a closed-door meeting with LePage to discuss his future. “And I will tell you another thing: It’s very clear that I say “out-of-state” because we have a minority population in Maine and they are not involved”.
Instead, Republican leaders in the state’s Legislature met with him and demanded “corrective action“.
The head of the Massachusetts Democratic Party on Tuesday targeted Gov. Charlie Baker for not offering a more forceful condemnation of Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s comment that black and Hispanic drug dealers from Lowell and Lawrence are helping fuel his state’s heroin and fentanyl epidemic. Drew Gattine, last week. “He is the governor of our state, but this is an embarrassing situation”.
LePage’s persistence in bringing up race in the context of drug dealing is causing growing discomfort in Republican political ranks, adding to calls for his resignation among his critics and frustrating leaders of Maine’s black community.
“I think some of Maine politics has become toxic unfortunately”, said Joyce.
Back in January LePage apologized for saying that out-of-state drug dealers come to ME to peddle heroin and impregnate “white girls”. Last week, comments that drug-dealing “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty” were coming to ME to impregnate “young white” women landed him in national hot water, but LePage has a long history of offending, often with allegedly racist remarks.
Gattine told the Press Herald he never explicitly called LePage a racist.
LePage, 67, said he had lost his temper when he was told that Gattine had described his views as racist.
He then arrives in MA for a conference, where he levels blame for the opioid crisis on minority communities outside his state, including Lowell and Lawrence: “The heroin-fentanyl arrests are not white people”.
LePage had been angry with Democratic Rep.
His representatives didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
“I don’t think he’s popular”, she says. In the interview, LePage laughed when he talked about using the guillotine to chop off the heads of drug traffickers.
First, there was the expletive-laden voicemail left for ME state Rep.
LePage’s constituents were openly divided about the best path forward, with many saying he should resign.
He says he’s going to meet with family and close advisers to decide what to do next.
LePage also certainly isn’t apologizing for endorsing racial profiling. “You can call your opponents nearly anything, you can threaten them”, Levesque said.
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And there are a fair number of lawmakers who come from conservative Christian backgrounds, and that kind of treatment of other people just doesn’t [sit] well with them.
