Topic: Maine Governor Paul LePage Voice Mail Message

[W1RC]

This story began in January 2016 when Maine Governor Paul LePage spoke at a town meeting and stated that  ?These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty ? these types of guys ? they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home.  Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.?

http://www.pressherald.com/2016/01/07/lepage-accused-of-making-racist-comment-at-bridgton-meeting/

At the time, LePage insisted?despite the explicit invocation of race?that he didn?t mean to focus on race. But when a citizen asked him about it at a town hall last week, he had changed his mind.

?Let me tell you this, explain to you, I made the comment that black people are trafficking in our state, now ever since I said that comment I?ve been collecting every single drug dealer who has been arrested in our state,? LePage said. ?I don?t ask them to come to Maine and sell their poison, but they come and I will tell you that 90-plus percent of those pictures in my book, and it?s a three-ringed binder, are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.?

LePage later apologized, saying, ?My brain was slower than my mouth.? But he continued with a swipe at the media: ?Personally, I don?t really care what the press thinks about me,? he said. ?What I do care is I want the drug dealers to know I?m after them?I want the Maine people to know that I may have a slip of the tongue, but my heart is to protect Maine people and that?s the end of the story.?

The next day, Drew Gattine, a Democratic state legislator from Westbrook criticized LePage and said his comments did nothing to help fight heroin. LePage responded by leaving Gattine a voicemail saying he was not a racist, calling Gattine a ?socialist cocksucker? and ?son of a bitch,? and daring the Democrat to release the voicemail, which Gattine did. Elsewhere, he said he wished that dueling was legal so that he could challenge Gattine and ?point it right between his eyes.?

This is the voice mail message Givernor Paul LePage left for Drew Gattine:

https://soundcloud.com/bdnmaineminute/lepage

?This is Gov. Paul Richard LePage. I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you cocksucker. I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I?m a racist. I?ve spent my life helping black people and you little son of a bitch, socialist cocksucker. You? I need you to? just friggin?. I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you.?

Afterwards LePage challenged Gattine to a duel:

"When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist, now I'd like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825. And we would have a duel, that's how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be [Alexander] Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he's been in this Legislature to help move the state forward."

When questioned by the media LePage explained himself as follows: ?Look, the bad guy is the bad guy, I don?t care what color he is,? LePage said. ?When you go to war, if you know the enemy and the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, then you shoot at red?. You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy and the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.?

"?I am here to save lives, and anybody that wants to sell their poison in Maine, I am here to put them in jail,? LePage added.  ?It is infuriating and to all Mainers, I am a little bit upset with these people continually calling me a racist when I grew up on the streets being harassed by all these white people because I was a poor French kid with nothing and I resent it and I?m angry at it and I think Mainers should be appalled and willing to throw these people out of the Legislature,? LePage said.

Here he is being interviewed by a Portland Press Herald reporter:

http://www.pressherald.com/2016/08/25/aclu-of-maine-asks-lepage-to-produce-binder-of-recent-maine-drug-arrests/

LePage apologized later in the day, saying in a statement, ?When someone calls me a racist, I take it very seriously. So I called Gattine and used the worst word I could think of. I apologize for that to the people of Maine, but make no apology for trying to end the drug epidemic that is ravaging our state.

But this isn?t the first time the controversial Republican governor had to take back offensive statements and apologize.  He are a few incidents:

In July 2015, LePage attended an annual mock legislature event for high school juniors, when the son of a Bangor Daily News cartoonist asked LePage what he thought of his father (the cartoonist, George Danby, has often depicted LePage in unflattering ways). ?I?d like to shoot him,? LePage responded.

The Bangor Daily News reports that LePage wrote a personal note to Danby?s son apologizing for the remark. While the contents of the letter weren?t made public, apparently they were heartfelt. Danby?s son wrote LePage back, saying, ?Thank you for the warm and thoughtful note?I appreciate your concern and frankness.?

In July 2012, LePage compared the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo twice in one week, Politico reports. First, he said in a radio address to Maine citizens that they ?must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo?the IRS.? Later, when asked to clarify his comments, he said the IRS wasn?t as bad as the Gestapo ?yet? but ?they?re headed in that direction.?

LePage met with Jewish leaders to apologize and said in his weekly radio address, ?The acts of the Holocaust were nothing short of horrific. Millions of innocent people were murdered and I apologize for my insensitivity to the word and the offense some took to my comparison of the IRS and the Gestapo.? He said it was ?never my intent to insult or to be hurtful to anyone."

Paul LePage is certainly a piece of work.