Lawmakers call Maine guv ‘unhinged’

Gov. Paul LePage left a voicemail message for Democratic Rep. Drew Gattine that said ‘I am after you’ and then told reporters he wished he could challenge Gattine to a duel and point a gun ‘right between his eyes’

PORTLAND, Maine—Maine’s bombastic Republican governor has built a reputation on his unfiltered comments, but his obscene tirade unleashed on a liberal lawmaker prompted Democratic lawmakers on Friday to warn that the governor was coming unhinged and to call for a political intervention.

Gov. Paul LePage apologized to “the people of Maine” — but not to the legislator — after he left a voicemail message for Democratic Rep. Drew Gattine that said “I am after you” and then told reporters he wished he could challenge Gattine to a duel and point a gun “right between his eyes.”

LePage said the angry outburst was justified because Gat- tine had called him racist — something Gattine denied.

In Portland, Assistant House Democratic Leader Sara Gideon called for a “political intervention” from members of both parties to ensure either that the governor “gets the help that he needs” or that he’s removed from office.

The voicemail followed a controversy that bubbled up Wednesday when LePage, who’s white, said at a town hall in North Berwick that photos he’s collected in a binder of drug dealers arrested in the state showed that 90 percent of them “are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut; the Bronx; and Brooklyn.”

He displayed the binder at a Friday news conference.

“I want you to prove that I’m a racist,” LePage told Gattine in the voicemail Thursday, adding that he had spent his life helping black people and calling Gattine a vulgar name related to oral sex.

“I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you.”

After leaving the voicemail, LePage invited reporters to the governor’s mansion, where he said he wished he could turn back the clock so he and Gattine could face off in 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 said, according to the Portland Press Herald.

“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.”

Gattine said he was stunned to receive the voicemail.

“My first thought after I listened is I’m really glad I’m not in the room. He sounded like if I’d been in the room with him that he’d be attacking me physically,” he said.

House and Senate Democrats and the Maine Democratic Party on Friday questioned LePage’s capacity to lead.

LePage said he would not resign unless several of his political opponents, including Gattine, did as well.

Police in Westbrook said Friday that they had received a citizen complaint about the voicemail.

A police official said the complaint came from someone who didn’t live in the city. It’s unclear if there will be an investigation. (AP)