Paul LePage is staying put – but he’s done talking to the press, he says.
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Speaking to reporters Wednesday at the State House, Maine’s highest-ranking Republican lawmaker said members of his caucus are “concerned for the governor, they are concerned for his family”.
The voicemail ended with LePage urging Gattine to share it widely “because I am after you”. “It hurt my family”. “I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son of a b***h, socialist c********r”, he said, according to a transcript by NPR. The question form also asked for a hometown and phone number, so I lied and wrote I was from Lebanon, Maine, and swapped out my area code for the state’s 207. Earlier this year a group of lawmakers started an effort to impeach him, contending the governor overstepped his authority by threatening to withhold funds from a nonprofit group that hired a political rival, but that effort collapsed before making it to the full House. I was in Maine looking to relax, get away from NY and spend some time on the beach drinking beer. I couldn’t enter with Jamie or sit near him because he is known to be critical of LePage. Thibodeau said it is not up to lawmakers to tell LePage what steps he should take – whether spiritual advisement or counseling or other actions – to address his behavior but said lawmakers want to know steps are being taken. “What I’m sure of is we can’t continue to have the explosiveness that we’ve seen so we are in hopes that he is going to find a way to correct them”. On Tuesday, he told a ME radio station “maybe it’s time to move on”. The Press Herald reported on the remark.
Hours later he changed his tune, paraphrasing Mark Twain on Twitter saying, “The reports of my political demise are greatly exaggerated”, before trying to change the subject with a series of messages on a visit to a tissue factory. Drew Gattine of Westbrook, suggested such comments were racially charged, LePage became enraged and left Gattine an obscenity-laden voicemail that itself contained a homophobic epithet. In the voicemail, the GOP governor berates Democratic State Rep. “It’s not something that I’ve ever called anybody”, he said. “He hit a wrong nerve”, LePage said Wednesday. It felt “like calling a black man the “N” word or a woman the “C” word”.
LePage, a second-term governor, said he doesn’t intend to talk to the media anymore, a claim he has made before. “It’s one thing to have one party behind, it’s another thing to not have any party behind you”.
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“Mr. Gattine, this is Gov. Paul Richard LePage”. “I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you (obscene term)”.
