BRIDGTON, Maine — Maine’s Republican governor says out-of-state drug dealers are impregnating “young white” girls.
Gov. Paul LePage made the remark while talking about the state’s heroin epidemic Wednesday. He described out-of-state drug dealers as “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” and said “half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave.”
LePage said:
“Some of the things that we have done. Number one, I got a bill in to the legislature right now to take the traffickers. Now the traffickers — these aren’t people that take drugs. These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty . . . these type of guys . . . they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then 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 gotta deal with down the road. We’re going to make them very severe felonies, number one.”
LePage is white. He once told the Portland NAACP chapter to kiss his “butt” and said he’d tell President Barack Obama to “go to hell.” He’s also likened the IRS to the Gestapo and called protesters “idiots.”
Moderate Republican and LePage critic Lance Dutson describes the governor’s comment about drug dealers as “blatantly racist.” He accuses the governor of “fearmongering.”
LePage didn’t say the races of the drug dealers. A spokesman said Thursday he wasn’t making a comment about race.
