Speaking directly to his comments, they are 100% ignorant and obnoxious. “We managed to elect and re-elect a governor who is unfit for high office”, an August 26 Portland Press-Herald editorial began, accusing LePage of “giving members of minority groups around the country the impression that ME is a white state where no one else is welcome”.
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Last week, LePage exacerbated the situation when he said that he was in possession of binders full of pictures of convicted dealers and that the dealers were overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, adding that they were “the enemy”-a comment that seemed to suggest that all blacks and Hispanics were the enemy”.
“He needs to apologize and that needs to be honest and that needs to be meaningful and he needs to understand in his heart that what he did was wrong”, Fredette said.
He declined to meet with the NAACP, and after the group encouraged him to meet with black prisoners, he said they could “kiss my butt”.
McCabe is a Skowhegan resident and the Maine House’s majority leader. The two had earlier called for “corrective action” but didn’t elaborate on what that might be. “Tonight’s press conference was more of a political stunt than it was to address any of the concerns of ME people and the concerns of the people around the nation”. Other LePage supporters, such as David Merrill and Connie Smith, both of Farmingdale, didn’t engage in arguments with participants. However, he also said it was a way to respond to what he described as people’s rhetoric directed at the governor. Thomas McGee, who said Baker should have been more forceful in condemning LePage’s comments on Monday.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage says he will not hold a public a town hall meeting as planned in the hometown of a Democratic legislator he targeted with an obscene voicemail rant. Amy Volk, R-Scarborough were calling for the Legislature to meet in special session to vote on admonishing LePage in an official censure, others were taking a measured approach to their reactions.
“I’m looking at all options”, LePage said in a weekly interview on WVOM-FM radio when asked if he would finish his term.
“I’m not going to say that I’m not going to finish it, I’m not saying that I am going to finish it”. “I think some things I’ve been asked to do are beyond my ability”.
“Where are we today versus six years ago when the unemployment rate was at 8.4 percent and today it’s down below 4 percent and we are having conversations about we don’t have enough workers in the state of ME to fill these jobs”, Fredette said. He also pointed to recent data that shows personal income growth for ME was the second highest in the nation for the last fiscal quarter and attributed that to policies pushed for by LePage.
On Aug. 25, LePage left a foul-mouthed voicemail message for Gattine that said in part, “I am after you”, and then he told reporters he wished he could challenge Gattine to a duel and point a gun “right between his eyes”.
LePage said he still has the energy to tackle issues like wait lists for state services and solar policy. “It’s not up to me to be a psychiatrist and psychoanalyze the governor”.
“He’s abrasive and rough on the edges and no one agrees with that”, Fredette said.
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Yesterday, while in Boston for the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers, LePage again brought up race, saying, “The heroin, fentanyl arrests are not white people”. Gattine has repeatedly denied calling LePage a racist.
