Governor Lepage Quotes

In a real sense, the new “get tough on opioids” policies have been fueled by the mistaken perception that most illegal opioid dealers are black or Latino. Consider the remarks made by then Maine governor Paul LePage at a town hall forum in 2016. The governor reassured attendees that his beef was not with Mainers who merely “take drugs.” Bear in mind that Maine is the whitest state in the union. His outrage, LePage said, was aimed squarely at out-of-state drug dealers: “Guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty . . . they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home.” But, LePage warned, before these packs of mythical drug pushers head home, they usually “impregnate a young white girl.”24

After the first group of families arrived in Lewiston by word of mouth, then-Mayor Laurier Raymond Jr. wrote an open letter saying that the town was full, even though much of downtown lay vacant. “This large number of new arrivals cannot continue without negative results for all,” Raymond wrote. The letter became a rallying cry for white supremacists, who descended on the town for a march soon after. An early Republican in the Trump mold, Governor Paul LePage won his elections campaigning against welfare, suggesting that immigrants were stealing resources from the local taxpayers. Said shook his head.

Maine is the state with the whitest and oldest population in the country, whose children are the least likely in the country to have a classmate of color. The state ranks among the top ten in opioid deaths. From 2011 to 2019, the state’s governor, Paul LePage, campaigned and governed on rhetoric about illegal immigrants on welfare and drug-dealing people of color.