During a campaign rally over the weekend, a Republican candidate for governor of Maine who previously referred to himself as “Donald Trump before Donald Trump” threatened to “deck” a member of the opposition party.
While serving as the governor of Maine from 2011 to 2019, Paul LePage gained the nickname “America’s craziest governor.” He will be vying for the position again in November.
The brazen former governor has previously made news for shocking and racist remarks, including joking about destroying one of his state’s most prominent newspapers and asserting that “people with the moniker D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” are coming to Maine to peddle narcotics and “impregnate a young white girl.”
LePage apparently returned to politics in order to appeal to the majority moderate voters in his home state, after assuring reporters in 2019 that he was done with politics and would “retire and go to Florida.”
However, a video released by the Daily Beast that allegedly shows LePage confronting someone who caught the former governor off-guard as he stepped through a pool of mud at the outdoor gathering seems to have undermined that attempt.
LePage says in the tape, “Six feet away or I’m going to deck you,” seeming astonished by how near the guy filming got.
The former governor holds a doughnut in one hand while pointing to a person behind the camera with the other.
He continues, “If you enter my area, you’re going down.”
Three guys who are supporting LePage laugh as they stand around him.
“Enough is enough,” LePage declares near the conclusion of the tape. It’s six feet away.
What transpired before or after the video is unclear.
According to reports, the individual who taped was a member of the Maryland Democratic Party staff.
When DailyMail.com asked for clarification, LePage’s top campaign advisor Brent Littlefield said: “Paul LePage is not like most people, he was homeless as a child and was forced to live on the streets, overcoming tremendous odds to earn an advanced college degree, become a successful Maine businessman, Mayor, and Governor.” Littlefield did not respond to DailyMail.com’s request for clarification.
The Maine GOP told DailyMail.com, “It’s no surprise that Paul LePage was upset with this paid Democratic Party Staffer getting so close in such a sneaky manner in a world where we just saw someone attempt to stab Lee Zeldin and Salman Rushdie forced to fight for his life after being stabbed multiple times.”
Few Maine legislators have endured as many threats to their safety as Paul LePage has because of his political views. Few Maine legislators, like Governor LePage, were raised in an abusive household.
As a result, Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine Republican Party, said that he faces a greater degree of personal danger than the majority.
Trackers should respect candidates’ personal space, says the easy answer. It’s one thing to film, but this meeting went above and above.
It was a member of their staff, the Maine Democratic Party revealed to DailyMail.com.
Paul LePage is a bully and always has been. I have seen him threaten individuals with violence and with the authority of his position while he was governor, according to Drew Gattine, chair of the Maine Democratic Party.
This most recent menacing outburst just serves to confirm his consistency. The people of Maine deserve more than Paul LePage’s divisiveness and bigotry.
Democrat Janet Mills, the current governor of Maine, is LePage’s opponent.
He became governor more than ten years ago thanks to a surge of Tea Party support sparked by Republican opposition to Barack Obama.
LePage then took a stand in support of Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primary, becoming just the second governor to do so.
“Before Donald Trump became well-known, I was Donald Trump.” In light of our shared values, I believe I should endorse him,’ he remarked in February of that year on the Howie Carr Show.
Additionally, he said that Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, Trump’s rivals at the time, were “destroying the brand” of the Republican Party.
In June, NBC reported that LePage’s political career is now in a “new era.”
According to political scientist Mark Brewer, “What he’s attempting to do is not necessarily modify his position, but take some of the rough edges off.”
At a campaign appearance in Mount Vernon on August 8, LePage recently questioned his state’s elections in a manner similar to Trump.
According to the Courier-Gazette, he stated, “I would say in Maine, I have tremendous faith in tiny communities — I’d say places with fewer than 1,000 people — because generally the clerks know everyone in town, so I have a lot of confidence.”
He said, “I have less confidence when you go to Bangor, Rockland, Lewiston, Portland, and South Portland,” referring to the state’s larger, bluer communities. You need to be a little bit more cautious in such regions. 163,000 voters who lacked IDs cast ballots in the most recent presidential election.