Republican Paul LePage, the former Maine governor who once proclaimed himself “Donald Trump before Donald Trump,” announced Friday that he’d run to regain his old post from Democratic incumbent Janet Mills in 2022. LePage told WGAN host Matt Gagnon that he “unequivocally” planned to campaign, adding, “If I'm breathing, I'm running.”
LePage spent eight years leading an ardently conservative administration in this Democratic-leaning state, but he was best known for his many racist and misogynistic pronouncements. Among many other things, the governor claimed in 2016 that the state’s opioid epidemic was caused by “[t]hese are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty. … They come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home.” LePage continued, “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've got to deal with down the road.”
LePage not only angrily declared in response to the outcry that he was not a racist, he, in the words of the Washington Post’s Amber Phillips, “appeared to threaten a state lawmaker's life for making that charge (even though the lawmaker denied making the charge to begin with).” Public records were later released that showed that most drug arrests in Maine involved white suspects.
LePage moved to Florida and registered to vote there the day he left office in January of 2019, saying, “I’m going to retire and go to Florida. I’m done with politics. I’ve done my eight years. It’s time for somebody else.” That hiatus didn’t last long, though, and LePage soon began talking about going back to Maine and challenging Mills.
The former governor returned to the Pine Tree State this year, and he’s spent the last several months attacking Mills’ efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic. In May, LePage led a protest against Mills’ emergency measures, and he called her a “dictator” in his Friday interview.