Tea Party Candidate Surges in Maine
Suzy Khimm reports:
Put Paul LePage in front of a reporter for more than a few minutes, and there's a good chance that he'll totally freak out. At least that's been the experience of the Maine journalists who've been covering the unlikely GOP's gubernatorial candidate since his shocking primary upset in June. Two weeks ago, LePage lashed out at a reporter who asked whether his children unfairly received in-state tuition at Florida State University. "Let's stop the bullshit, and let's answer the questions the way they should be answered!" he snapped. The small-town mayor stormed out of another press conference—one that he himself had convened—after a reporter asked him about an illegal real-estate tax break that his wife received.
LePage recently told a TV news anchor that he was "about ready to punch" another local reporter who was dogging him. And he's vowed to continue his pugilistic ways if elected governor. "[A]s your governor, you're going to be seeing a lot of me on the front page saying: 'Governor LePage Tells Obama to Go to Hell,'" he told a group of local fisherman in late September, in an exchange that was captured on video. Such remarks have led to comparisons with the New York GOP's own hot-headed gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino, who threatened to "take out" a reporter during a confrontation last week.
LePage's opponents have jumped all over the outbursts to assail him as a loose canon whose unhinged temperament makes him unfit for office. "His comments are offensive. It just shows that LePage is not ready to lead," Arden Manning, a campaign aide for the Maine Democrats, told the Associated Press. Eliot Cutler, who's running againt LePage on the Independent ticket, sniffed: "There is a crude bullying to his approach to dealing with others." But it's unclear whether the attacks will stick, as it's precisely LePage's rough-hewn character and outsider status that have been responsible for his unexpected political ascendancy.
Raised in a poor Franco-American family, LePage has built his entire campaign on his rags-to-riches biography: He ran away from home at age 11 to escape his abusive father, worked as a shoeshine boy and dishwasher to support himself, and eventually ascended in the business world to become the general manager of Marden's, a much-beloved Maine discount chain. "People identify with him in many different ways, no matter how often he screws up in the press or says something off key," says Peter Mills, a moderate Republican who lost to LePage in the seven-person primary. "People say, 'That's what I might say if I were running for governor'—[they] want to vote for one of their own." He contrasted LePage's hardscrabble background with his own, as "a smart little kid who ran off to Harvard."
LePage's primary victory over the summer stunned the political establishment on both sides of the aisle, who had dismissed the dark horse candidate as too conservative and marginal to win in a state like Maine. The mayor of Waterville—a small, Democratic-leaning college town—LePage had quietly developed a grassroots following that had escaped the notice of many of his opponents. Though it's long been considered a bastion of political independence and ideological restraint, Maine hasn't been immune to the conservative anti-government revolt that's swept the nation. Having tapped into the ground-level backlash early on, LePage has led in almost every general election poll to date. And Maine's angriest politician could end up channeling his rage to become the state's first Republican governor in 15 years.
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