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In Interview, LePage Attempts to Defend Comments on Race

Wednesday morning, before making his apologies, Gov. Paul LePage took another stab at defending his comments over the last week.

In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Ray Richardson on WLOB, LePage was asked why he keeps bringing up race in the discussion around the state’s heroin problem. His response did not reflect any evolution in his thinking.

In the 25-minute interview, LePage was asked, among other things, whether he had any substance abuse or mental health issue and whether he had ever entered rehab. No, the governor said, he had not.

But then host Ray Richardson asked him something that others have wondered out loud for the past week. Why does he keep bringing up race in the discussion around out-of-state drug dealers?

“Why does the color of the drug dealer, who in my mind ought to be executed, but we don’t do that here, why does the color of the drug dealer matter?” Richardson says.

“Because all lives matter, not just black lives,” LePage says.

“I’m not sure what that means,” Richardson says.

“That means it’s white people dying everyday. Every single week we have people dying in Maine. And, believe me, some of ‘em are not white. There are people of all nationalities dying. But the point is this nation is caught up in defending one ethnic group,” LePage says. “What about the people in Maine?”

The governor has said that 90 percent of out-of-state drug dealers are black and Hispanic, based on a collection of mugshots he started saving in January.

On the show, LePage went on to point out one of his other frequent statistics — that there are three babies born affected by drugs in Maine every day.

“Their ethnicity doesn’t matter,” he says.

“If it doesn’t matter, why bring it up?” Richardson says.

“It’s a good point. But the fact of the matter is, you know, I’ll go back to what my wife says to me: ‘You’re brutally honest and sometimes it hurts.’ And unfortunately, it’s the truth,” LePage says.

FBI crime statistics for 2014, the most recent year they’re available, show that most drug dealers in Maine are white. Only 14 percent are black.

On Wednesday, Maine Republican Party Chair Rick Bennett issued a statement praising LePage for apologizing to Rep. Drew Gattine and for acknowledging that his words were “harmful and inappropriate.” Bennett went on to say that “Republicans do not believe that race should be part of enforcement of drug policy” or any criminal laws.

“Justice is blind to skin color,” Bennett wrote.

But the governor’s critics point out that he has yet to apologize for his portrayal of minorities, and for some people, that hurts.