A newspaper that published video of Maine governor Paul LePage calling black and Hispanic people “the enemy”, raising concerns over potential racial profiling by law enforcement, has apologized on behalf of its state for exposing the Republican and his views to the nation.
“Dear America: Maine here,” the editorial board of the Portland Press Herald wrote in a piece published online on Friday. “Please forgive us – we made a terrible mistake. We managed to elect and re-elect a governor who is unfit for high office.”
At a town hall event in North Berwick on Wednesday, LePage said the majority of drug dealers arrested in Maine were black or Hispanic in origin.
“I don’t ask them to come to Maine and sell their poison,” he said, “but they come. And I will tell you that 90-plus percent of those pictures in my book, and it’s a three-ring binder, are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut, the Bronx and Brooklyn. I didn’t make the rules – I’m just telling you what’s happening.”
At a subsequent press conference, video of which was released by the Press Herald, he said: “Look, the bad guy is the bad guy. I don’t care what colour he is. 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.”
Addressing the state’s Republican house minority leader, Ken Fredette, a military lawyer, he said: “Don’t you? Ken, you’ve been in uniform. 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 colour or people of Hispanic origin.”
LePage has made other controversial comments about race. In January, he claimed his state’s drug problems were due to “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” who travelled to Maine and “half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave”.
LePage subsequently said he had meant to say “Maine women” rather than “white women”.
In February, he told a radio station he made such “outrageous comments” to get the attention of legislators and force them to act over a dramatic rise in heroin addiction and overdose deaths across the state.
“We got a few more drug agents, but what did I have to do?” he said. “I had to go screaming at the top of my lungs about black dealers coming in and doing the things that they are doing to our state.”
He also said he would “bring the guillotine back” to use on convicted drug traffickers. Maine does not use the death penalty.
LePage made further headlines this week with an expletive-laden voicemail left on the phone of a Democratic state representative, Drew Gattine, who the governor claimed had levelled charges of racism against him.
“I want you to prove I’m a racist,” LePage said, adding that he had spent his life helping black people and calling Gattine a vulgar name related to oral sex. “I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you.”
LePage subsequently invited reporters to the governor’s mansion, where he bragged about the voicemail and challenged Gattine to a duel, the Press Herald reported.
“When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist ... I wish it were 1825,” LePage said. “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.”
On Thursday, the Maine chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a public-records request seeking access to the three-ring binder referred to by LePage at the town hall event in North Berwick.
In a statement, Alison Beyea, executive director of the Maine ACLU, cited LePage’s assertion that Maine police were nine times more likely to arrest people of color for selling drugs than white people, and said: “We know white people are just as likely to commit drug offenses.”
Beyea added: “This alarming disparity in arrests raises significant concerns that Maine law enforcement is participating in unconstitutional racial profiling … We look forward to examining the governor’s records so we can get to the bottom of this and hold our elected officials accountable to the constitution and the rule of law.”
LePage has supported and compared his abrasive style to the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, in February telling the syndicated Howie Carr radio show: “I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular, so I think I should support him since we’re one of the same cloth.”
In its apology for the governor’s behavior, the Portland Press Herald acknowledged his “gruff exterior and blunt way of talking that some of us find refreshing”. But, it added, LePage has “shown again and again that he governs by grudge, and uses his power to beat up on people who cannot fight back”.
The board said it looked forward to 2019, when LePage will leave office at the end of his final term and Mainers will be able to begin to “fix the damage he has done”.