At a town meeting in Bridgton Jan. 6, Gov. Paul LePage described those who come to Maine to sell drugs as “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty …. these types of guys.
They come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”
The statement didn’t attract much attention at first until a disgruntled former staffer of the governor jumped on it and proceeded to make an issue out of it. It was then picked up by the mainstream media here and broadcast around the country as proof of the inherent racism of Republicans.
What is racist about the statement?
Is there not more than a little truth in LePage’s statement, however crude it may be?
Many years ago, LePage met a young Jamaican teenager and brought him to this country, took him into his home and raised him as part of the family. He paid for the boy’s education and is helping him get a start in the world. Are those the actions of a racist?
There was a sign in the Franklin County headquarters during the 2014 campaign — “We prefer to have a governor with his foot in his mouth rather than one with his hands in our pockets.”
True then, true now.
Terence McManus, New Sharon
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