March 4, 2019--My Former Maine Governor

Thanks to term limits, I thought that since Mainers had the good fortune to finally be rid of their hateful governor, Paul LePage, I would never again hear about him. At least until his obituary.

But, no, he's still making noise. This time reported in a story that appeared in the New York Daily News. Excerpts are below--

Maine’s former governor Paul LePage, who left office last month, argued the Electoral College is necessary to keep white people in power. 

“What would happen if they eliminate it? White people will not have anything to say,” Paul LePage told a WVOM radio show Tuesday when asked about abolishing the system currently used to elect presidents. “It’s only going to be the minorities that would be elected.” 

LePage, who left office Jan. 2 and now lives in Florida, said making every vote equal would give too much power to states like California, Texas and Florida, where larger numbers of nonwhite people live. 

The 70-year-old Republican served two terms as Maine’s governor and had one of the highest disapproval ratings among governor’s nationwide during his last year in office. He’s no stranger to racial controversy. 

In 2016, LePage complained “guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” come to Maine from New York and Connecticut to sell drugs and “half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave.” 

Later that year, LePage called Latinos the “enemy” during a bizarre press conference where he tried to explain why he’d hurled homophobic remarks at a reporter. 

“The enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in are people of color or people of Hispanic origin,” he said. 

On March 1, a proposal to elect U.S presidents with a popular vote rather than doing so through the Electoral College process will be considered by the Maine legislature. 

LePage called the bill “insane” and worried that white people, who make up more than 61% of the nation’s population and have accounted for all but one of the nation’s presidents, are “gonna’ be forgotten people.”

Spending six months a year in Maine, he was my part-time governor and a major embarrassment. While residing in Florida I am sure he will continue to be welcome as he has been at Mar-a-Lago.