Republican Gov. Paul LePage became enraged when he thought State Rep. Drew Gattine had called him a racist
BarkGrowlBite | August 28, 2016
During a town hall meeting in North Berwick on Wednesday, Maine’s Republican Governor Paul LePage thumbed through a three-ring binder which he said contained the photographs of drug dealers arrested by the police and that 90 percent of them were black or Hispanic.
LePage was criticized as being racially insensitive for making those remarks.
On Thursday he left the following voicemail message with Democratic State Representative Drew Gattine:
“Mr. Gattine, 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. Thank you.”
LePage didn’t stop there. He invited reporters to the governor’s mansion and told them he wished it was 1825 so he could challenge 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.”
Gattine denies he called LePage a racist.
Now there are calls for LePage to resign. And there are also calls for the police to conduct a criminal investigation into his remarks.
And then there are the civil libertarians who say that the photographs in his binder prove that the police in Maine are guilty of racial profiling.
As for me, I think it’s kind of refreshing to have a governor use some colorful language in saying what’s really on his mind.
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