“If you have an ‘R’ next to your name and you open your mouth, you’re hated. If you’re a Democrat, like Elizabeth Warren, you can say anything you please and get away with it. That’s where we are.”
— Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), quoted by the Boston Globe, while campaigning for Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Geoff Diehl (R).
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said that he was “100 percent behind” a former White House speechwriter accused of domestic abuse and even offered David Sorensen his old job back in his administration, the Portland Press Herald reports.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) defended monuments to the Confederacy, claiming that 7,600 Mainers fought for the South and that the war was initially about land, not slavery, CNN reports.
Said LePage: “What was the war? If you really truly read and study the Civil War, it was turned into a battle for the slaves, but initially — I mean, 7,600 Mainers fought for the Confederacy. And they fought because they were concerned about — they were farmers — and they were concerned about their land. Their property. It was a property rights issue as it began. The President of the United States, who was a very brilliant politician, really made it about slavery to a great degree.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said that taking down statues of Confederate figures is “just like” removing a monument to people who died in the 9/11 attacks, Bloomberg reports.
LePage also noted he didn’t find out about the violence until Tuesday because he doesn’t watch TV or read newspapers.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) suggested he makes up stories to mislead reporters, the AP reports.
Said LePage: “I just love to sit in my office and make up ways so they’ll write these stupid stories because they are just so stupid, it’s awful.”
He also characterized the Maine media as “vile,” “inaccurate” and “useless” and said “the sooner the print press goes away, the better society will be.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) will not enter the 2018 race for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Angus King (I-ME), the Portland Press Herald reports.
“LePage started talking publicly as early as 2015 about mounting a challenge to King, an independent who was Maine’s governor from 1995 to 2003. But in a statement issued late Wednesday, his political adviser, Washington, D.C.- based Brent Littlefield, said the Republican governor, who will turn 69 in October, feels he could better serve his constituents by remaining focused on the duties of governor.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said that says he’s strongly considering running for the U.S. Senate, but also feels he “wouldn’t make a very good legislator,” the Boston Globe reports.
He added that he thinks committee meetings “would be boring.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said that he is “very, very discouraged and disappointed” with the House Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, CNN reports.
Said LePage: “Right now, I am very, very discouraged and disappointed with what the House Republicans are introducing. Basically it’s not much better than—in fact, I don’t know, they haven’t scored it yet, so we don’t know what the cost is. But based on what I see and I’m reading and what has happened here in Maine over the last 15 years, I don’t think it’s an improvement.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) “has been out of the state for most of the past two weeks and has spent much of that time in Washington, fueling speculation he might be in line for a position in the Trump administration,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
A LePage spokesman wouldn’t deny the rumors: “The president is pretty impressed with all the accomplishments the governor has made over the last six years that the Maine media have ignored.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said that too many people are vying for power within the White House and that the President should stop treating it like a TV show, CNN reports.
Said LePage: “The thing I’m sensing is that there’s three or four chiefs at the top. I would say this: You’ve got to put someone somebody in charge.”
He added: “In his case, too much competition. Everybody’s fighting to be that No. 1 person. You’re gonna have a lot of slip ups. I’ve met Donald Trump, I think he does promote some competition. He brings that business aspect to it. We got to tell him that the TV show’s over and he’s gotta move on now.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) said “that the NAACP should apologize to white America, making the comment just hours after he weighed in on the president-elect’s Twitter beef with a civil rights icon, saying U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) should be grateful,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
Said LePage: “I will just say this: John Lewis ought to look at history. It was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, it was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant who fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice.”
“There’s 50 less pounds of me to hate.”
— Maine Gov. Pauk LePage (R), quoted by the Boston Globe, after undergoing weight loss surgery.
“Even Paul LePage, the controversial governor of Maine who has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump for his loud rhetoric and habit of disparaging the press, is harping on the Republican nominee for his refusal to commit to conceding if he loses the November election,” Politico reports.
Said LePage: “Not accepting the results, I think, is just a stupid comment… I mean, c’mon. Get over yourself.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) claimed that elections in his state and in the United States as a whole couldn’t be considered legitimate until voter ID laws are passed, CNN reports.
Said LePage: “No. I am not confident we’re going to have a clean election in Maine and I’ll tell you why. The left, the Democratic party, insists on not having IDs. And will people from the cemetery be voting? Yes. All around the country. The media and the Democratic party want everybody to vote whether they’re citizens or not.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) stood by Donald Trump in a radio interview, saying that the United States might need someone like the GOP nominee to show “authoritarian power,” CNN reports.
Said LePage: “Sometimes, I wonder that our Constitution is not only broken, but we need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country and bring back the rule of law because we’ve had eight years of a president, he’s an autocrat, he just does it on his own, he ignores Congress and every single day, we’re slipping into anarchy.”
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) “vowed that he would never again speak to the media, whom he accused of stoking controversies,” the Boston Globe reports.
Said LePage: “I will no longer speak to the press ever again after today. And I’m serious. Everything will be put into writing. I’m tired of being caught in the gotcha moments.”
He also clarified he will not resign after leaving an obscenity-laced voice-mail message for a state lawmaker.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Wonk Wire, Political Job Hunt and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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