‘I am after you’: Maine governor threatens lawmaker in shocking, profanity-laced voicemail

Maine Gov. Paul LePage left a hostile voicemail for a state lawmaker Thursday morning, calling him a “socialist c***sucker.”

The Portland Press Herald reports that the governor left the expletive-filled message after a TV reporter said that Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook, was among several people who accused him of racism.

“Mr. Gattine, this is Gov. Paul Richard LePage. I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you c***sucker,” he said. “I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son of a bitch, socialist c***sucker. You … I need you to, just friggin’. I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you.”

The accusations of racism stemmed from comments LePage made during a town hall in North Berwick on Wednesday. LePage had said he has a three-ring binder of photos from drug busts and that most “are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut; the Bronx; and Brooklyn.” According to LePage, Gattine called him a racist in response. Gattine denied this to local outlets.

Unapologetic about his statements, not only did LePage encourage Gattine to record the voicemail, he also invited a journalist from the Press Herald and a TV crew from local ABC affiliate WMTW to the Blaine House, the official residence of the governor, to conduct a half-hour interview on his motivations. He lamented that he could not settle their dispute with a duel.

“When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist, now I’d like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825,” LePage told the local paper. “And we would have a duel, that’s how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be [Alexander] Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt, and he has not done a damn thing since he’s been in this legislature to help move the state forward.”

On Friday morning, LePage released an official statement on the controversy, saying that he takes accusations of racism very seriously.

“I didn’t know Drew Gattine from a hole in the wall until yesterday. It made me enormously angry when a TV reporter asked me for my reaction about Gattine calling me a racist. It is the absolute worst, most vile thing you can call a person. So I called Gattine and used the worst word I could think of,” the statement reads.

LePage apologized to the people of Maine but said he makes no apologies for trying to quell the drug epidemic that’s ravaging his state. He said legislators like Gattine are more interested in being politically correct and protecting drug dealers than dealing with the crisis.

He clarified that when he said he would go after Gattine, he did not mean that he planned to physically harm the lawmaker.

“I am a history buff, and I referenced how political opponents used to call each other out in the 1820s — including Andrew Jackson, the father of the Democratic Party,” LePage continued. “Obviously, it is illegal today; it was simply a metaphor and I meant no physical harm to Gattine. But I am calling him out to stop giving inflammatory sound bites and get to work to end this crisis that is killing Mainers, destroying families and creating drug-addicted babies, all so the drug dealers Gattine is protecting can make a profit.”

Gattine did not immediately return a request for comment from Yahoo News.