ME governor: CT drug dealers impregnate ‘young white’ girls

“The Governor’s crude comments have no place in ME or any other decent society”. “There’s a problem and for me as a father and as a parent, that’s probably what disturbs me the most”, said Maine House Speaker Mark Eves, a Democrat. “These are guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty”, he said.

The Huffington Post characterized it as a “racist claim” and The New York Times described the comments as “racially-charged remarks”. Given the fact that LePage gave his fictional out-of-state miscreants names like “D-Money” and “Smoothie”, and given that he said they were impregnating “young, white” girls-all remarks playing to racist tropes-the denial is absurd.

Republican Gov. Paul LePage said out-of-state drug dealers are impregnating “young, white” girls.

Mr LePage’s chief of communications, Peter Steele, insisted the governor was not talking about race. “If you go to ME, you can see it’s 95% white“.

Later he clarified, “If I slipped up and used the wrong word, then I apologize to all the Maine women”.

There is a long history of white leaders exploiting fear of miscegenation and dilution of white blood, but typically that’s associated with the postbellum South rather than 21st-century Maine. The Democratic National Committee, in a statement late Thursday night, called on Christie to renounce the endorsement from LePage.

The governor denied making the remark.

During his news conference today, the governor declared that he “sincerely” doesn’t like the press, and tried to shift focus to the substance abuse issues he has dealt with in office – particularly the effects they’ve had on women and children.

He says, “My brain was slower than my mouth”. Cameras and reporters were present at Wednesday’s town hall event, LePage said, and yet they didn’t write about his remarks at the time.

In the press conference on Friday morning, LePage said he made a slip-up and that he did not intend to say “white women”, but instead “Maine women”.

He said on Friday: “I made a mistake and I’m not ideal, but I will not stop correcting myself and bringing the issue at hand: drugs, drugs and more drugs”.

Christie has so far not said anything on the matter and LePage is not apologizing for his comments. ME author Stephen King sarcastically tweeted that LePage was “once more showing his sensitivity and intelligence”, while Hillary Clinton campaign staffer Marlon Marshall stated that the Republican governor’s “racist rants sadly distract from efforts to address one of our nation’s most pressing problems”.