One of the country’s most outspoken elected officials, Maine Gov. Paul LePage, left a bizarre and threatening voicemail for a Democratic state lawmaker he thought called him racist, calling Rep. Drew Gattine a “socialist cocksucker.”
“Mr. Gattine, this is Gov. Paul Richard LePage,” a recording of the message begins. “I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you cocksucker.”
“I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker,” the governor continued. “You … I need you to, just friggin. I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you.”
The governor left the expletive-laden message on Thursday morning, after a reporter asked him to respond to critics who have called him racist. LePage asked the reporter who’d called him racist, and while the journalist mentioned he had talked with Gattine, he didn’t say that Gattine specifically called LePage racist, The Portland Press Herald reported.
The governor later called the same news crew to his home to continuing slamming Gattine as “a snot-nosed little guy” that he would love to challenge to an old-fashioned duel.
“I’d like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825,” he reportedly said. “We would have a duel, that’s how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he’s been in this Legislature to help move the state forward.”
Gattine has long criticized the governor for his plans to reform the state’s welfare programs, but he told the newspaper that he never called LePage racist.
You can listen to the voicemail in all its glory over at the Press Herald.
