Maine’s governor teeters as heat grows over threats, race remarks
AUGUSTA, Maine — The beleaguered Republican governor of Maine sent mixed messages on Tuesday of whether he would step down amid widespread criticism over his latest tirades of obscene, threatening and racially charged remarks, while Republican lawmakers gathered here to decide on how — and whether — they would officially address his erratic behavior.
Gov. Paul LePage, the Republican whose tenure here has often seemed to lurch from one self-generated crisis to another, suggested in a radio interview Tuesday morning that he was considering stepping down as the outrage generated by a profane voice mail and his apparent endorsement of racial profiling drew admonishments from both parties.
“It’s really one thing to have one party behind you,” LePage said on the radio, in an interview that was at times uncharacteristically self-effacing. “It’s another thing not to have any party behind you.”
But in the early afternoon, in a Twitter message, LePage seemed to have regained his spirit of defiance.
“Regarding rumors of resignation, to paraphrase Mark Twain, ‘The reports of my political demise are greatly exaggerated,’ ” the message read.
The question now is how he will weather a controversy that seasoned observers of LePage have called remarkable, even by his uninhibited standards.
LePage’s political fate, to a certain extent, appears to rest in the hands of the House Republicans, who came here, the capital, from around the state on Tuesday for a caucus meeting. Democrats and some Senate Republicans have called for a special session, which would raise the specter of impeachment for LePage.
The caucus meeting followed days of controversy, after LePage stated at a town-hall meeting last Wednesday that the vast majority of heroin dealers in Maine were black and Hispanic.
As criticism swelled, LePage came to believe that a Democratic lawmaker, Drew Gattine, had called him a racist, and left him a threatening voice mail threaded with obscenities, which he followed by suggesting that he and Gattine have a duel.