When Governor LePage asserted around the time of his recent bout of profanity laced voicemail that he kept a binder of mugshots that proved drug dealers in Maine were overwhelmingly black or Hispanic, the effort to make that binder public under Maine's FOAA law began.
Today the binder was made public. Despite the fact that LePage was completely statistically wrong, seeing the binder is essential to understanding the Governor’s myopic take on the problem associated with the opioid and drug epidemic affecting northern New England.
Here is the binder.
The binder will be pulled apart by various groups to both criticize and support of Paul LePage. But beyond the analysis of whether or not it has any statistical relationship to reality, there is one overriding theme: Governor LePage’s relationship to the unreality of his obsession with race.
The true lesson to take from the binder may well be that LePage’s obsession, as demonstrated throughout the binder with his scribbling of marginalia “get photo,” is perhaps why he emphasizes hard hitting law enforcement as the solution to the opioid crisis instead of a far broader approach that includes a greater emphasis on treatment and emergency response. Just keeping the binder itself demonstrates his obsession with creating finger-pointing over careful understanding.
LePage has always been lazy and takes the low road. It is easier to blame a problem on race in an overwhelming white state. It uses fear of “otherness” to aim for a visceral reflex of hitting back. It frighteningly identifies race as the target. While it is intellectually immoral and lazy, it sadly tells us very clearly much about Governor Paul LePage and his obsession with race that divides and offers no solutions of the type that we should expect a Governor to be working diligently to produce for the people of Maine.