Troy R. Bennett | BDN Troy R. Bennett | BDN 
 
 Gov. Paul LePage told a group of Republican lawmakers and political supporters during a fundraiser on Aug. 12 that President Barack Obama “hates white people,” according to an attendee of the event. 
 
 “It was a typical, off the cuff, off the script, Paul LePage comment,” the attendee, who preferred to remain anonymous because of fear of political reprisals, told the Bangor Daily News. 
 
 The attendee described the governor’s comments as plainspoken and tacked onto the end of remarks to the group that were critical of the Affordable Care Act, the president’s health care reform bill commonly referred to as “Obamacare.” 
 
 The fundraiser was sponsored by the Kennebec County Republican Committee and was held at the private home of John and Lisa Fortier in Belgrade. 
 
 Between 50 and 60 people attended, including several sitting Republican lawmakers, representatives from Sen. Susan Collins’ office and the new chairman of the Republican Party, Rick Bennett. 
 
 The fundraiser was billed as a chance to meet the governor and first lady and honor Bennett’s election as chairman, according to a Maine Republican Party mailing. The donation was $50 per person to attend. 
 
 Bennett, reached Monday, confirmed the governor made comments about President Obama and race during the fundraiser. 
 
 “[Gov. LePage] said President Obama had an opportunity to unify the country on race, but didn’t do anything,” Bennett said. 
 
 When asked directly whether the governor made the remark about the president and white people, Bennett said, “I didn’t hear that.” 
 
 In a subsequent conversation, he said, “The governor is not a racist. He raised an African-American kid,” a reference to Devon Raymond, a native of Jamaica who lived with the LePages in Waterville, and whom the governor refers to as his adopted son. 
 
 “I’ve never heard him say anything racist,” Bennett said. 
 
 LePage political adviser Brent Littlefield also said the governor is not a racist. 
 
 “It seems farfetched for anyone, even a newspaper, to make an insinuation the Governor is racist given his life history. He and his family made a choice and sacrifice when they offered Devon the opportunity to join their family many years ago. Paul and Ann call him their son. Paul LePage recognized many people helped him make it out of poverty and he has been determined to help others succeed,” Littlefield said in an email statement. 
 
 Littlefield also pointed out LePage’s regular attendance at Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations in Waterville. 
 
 House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, R-Newport, also attended the fundraiser, but said he did not hear any offensive remarks from the governor. 
 
 “I was kind of in-and-out,” Fredette said. 
 
 The attendee who confirmed the remarks said those farthest away from the governor likely would have had difficulty hearing him. 
 
 The governor’s remarks first were reported Monday by the Portland Press Herald, which cited two unnamed Republican lawmakers as hearing LePage’s comments. 
 
 LePage spokesman Peter Steele told them the event was a campaign function and referred questions to Littlefield. 
 
 Calls for comment to LePage’s representatives were not returned Monday evening. 
 
 Reaction to the governor’s comments spread quickly across social media Monday evening, drawing scorn from Republicans and Democrats alike. 
 
 One high-profile Republican, former 1st District congressional candidate Dean Scontras, went so far as to say LePage should resign. ||||| Republican lawmakers: LePage said Obama 'hates white people' 
 
 Two Republicans say the governor made the remark during a fundraiser in Belgrade last week. 
 
 By Eric Russell erussell@pressherald.com 
 
 Staff Writer 
 
 Gov. Paul LePage told a group of Republicans last week that President Obama "hates white people," according to two state lawmakers who say they heard the remark directly. 
 
 The governor made the comment during a Maine Republican Party fundraiser on Aug. 12 at the home of John and Linda Fortier in Belgrade. According to the invitation, the fundraiser was a "meet and greet" for LePage and first lady Ann LePage, and an opportunity to meet Rick Bennett, the new party chairman. 
 
 The lawmakers, both Republicans, confirmed the comment when asked by a Portland Press Herald reporter but asked that their names be withheld for fear of political retribution. 
 
 Each said LePage talked about how Obama could have been the best president ever if he had highlighted his biracial heritage. LePage said the president hasn't done that because he hates white people. 
 
 "Yeah, he said it," said one of the lawmakers. "It was one little thing from a speech, but I think most people there thought it was totally inappropriate." 
 
 Bennett, who was elected in July to succeed Richard Cebra as Maine Republican Party chairman, did not return multiple calls for comment about the story Monday. 
 
 Two other lawmakers who attended the event – Reps. Alex Willette of Mapleton and Larry Dunphy of Embden – said that if LePage made the comment, they didn't hear it. 
 
 "I didn't hear him say anything like that," said Willette, who added that he spent most of the event trying to raise money for his candidacy for the 2nd Congressional District seat. 
 
 Dunphy said the governor made some brief, informal remarks but he doesn't remember hearing anything about the president hating white people. 
 
 Peter Steele, the governor's director of communications, said he couldn't comment because the fundraiser was not official business. He referred questions to Brent Littlefield, the governor's senior political adviser, who initially wouldn't comment and was not at the event. 
 
 After the governor's remark was reported in the media, Littlefield issued a statement that said, in part, “It seems farfetched for anyone, even a newspaper, to make an insinuation the governor is racist given his life history." 
 
 The statement makes reference to Devon Raymond Jr., a Jamaica-born man whom the LePages cared for while he attended high school in Maine: "(LePage) and his family made a choice and sacrifice when they offered Devon the opportunity to join their family many years ago. Paul and Ann call him their son. Paul LePage recognized many people helped him make it out of poverty and he has been determined to help others succeed.” 
 
 The statement also referred to LePage's years of participating in the Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in Waterville. 
 
 The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. 
 
 Maine is one of the least racially diverse states, with a black population estimated at 1.3 percent, according to the U.S. Census. 
 
 One of the lawmakers who confirmed LePage's comment said he supports the governor's policies but is tired of being asked to defend controversial statements. 
 
 LePage has a history of making inflammatory comments that have sometimes overshadowed his policy achievements. 
 
 • In September 2010, before he was elected, he told a group of fishermen at a forum: "As 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.'" 
 
 • In January 2011, shortly after he was sworn in, he declined an invitation to an event hosted by the NAACP in Portland. When asked what he would tell the group if it questioned his decision, LePage replied, "Tell them to kiss my butt." 
 
 • In July last year, he compared the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo, the Nazi police. 
 
 • In June of this year, he said Maine Assistant Senate Majority Leader Troy Jackson would be "the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline." 
 
 If the governor did in fact say that Obama hates white people, it would top the governor's list, said Mark Brewer, a political scientist at the University of Maine. 
 
 "It's a ludicrous comment," he said. "But does it hurt him? Given that it's Paul LePage, I don't necessarily think so. There will be a big uproar from some, but the general reaction will be, 'There he goes again.'" 
 
 Even though the public has been desensitized by LePage's many controversial statements, Brewer said, the governor "shouldn't get a pass." 
 
 Eric Russell can be contacted at 791-6344 or at: erussell@pressherald.com 
 
 Twitter: @PPHEricRussell ||||| AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage responded Friday to the firestorm that erupted after he said drug dealers coming to Maine were impregnating young white girls, admitting to making “one slip” in the comment before going on to blame the media for implying that the remark was racist. 
 
 The governor apologized to women in Maine during a 25-minute news conference, saying his statement wasn’t intended to single out race or a particular group of women. He said that he isn’t “smart enough” to deliberately tap old racial tensions about black men and white women and blamed the media for making that connection in its coverage of his remark, which continued to ricochet across the national media landscape. 
 
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 Spose remixes Gov. LePage’s ‘impregnate a young, white girl’ quote into a song AUGUSTA, ME - JANUARY 8: Gov. Paul LePage speaks during a news conference on Friday Jan. 8, 2016 in the State House cabinet room. (Photo by Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer) SOME OF Gov. LEPAGE'S PAST CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENTS September 2010: As a candidate for governor, LePage said during a taping on MPBN’s MaineWatch program that “I’m about ready to punch A.J. Higgins,” an MPBN reporter. Two days later, LePage’s campaign manager said it was a joke. LePage also told a group of fishermen at a forum that he wouldn’t be afraid to tell President Obama to “go to hell.” He later said he regretted the words, but didn’t back down on criticism of the administration. January 2011: After the director of the state’s NAACP chapter said the group felt neglected when LePage declined invitations to attend two Martin Luther King Jr. Day events, citing scheduling conflicts, a reporter asked LePage about it. He answered: “Tell them to kiss my butt.” On the holiday, LePage ended up attending a breakfast honoring the slain civil rights leader, an event sponsored by a Rotary club and a senior citizens’ group. February 2011: LePage dismissed the negative health effects caused by the chemical BPA during a news conference, saying: “The only thing that I’ve heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards.” July 2012: LePage, in a radio address, assailed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the health care overhaul law, saying Americans had no choice but to buy health insurance or “pay the new Gestapo — the IRS.” He later said he didn’t mean to offend the Jewish community or minimize the Holocaust. June 2013: Expressing his frustration over the state budget, LePage used a vulgar phrase to describe a Democratic opponent, saying the lawmaker “claims to be for the people, but he’s the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.” August 2013: Sitting in a flight simulator while visiting North Berwick defense contractor Pratt & Whitney, LePage joked “I want to find the Portland Press Herald building and blow it up.” October 2014: LePage was addressing reporters after a court lifted a quarantine order placed on nurse Kaci Hickox over Ebola concerns and a reported case of hepatitis C contacted at a restaurant when he said: “I have been trying to get the president to pay attention to the illegals who are in our country. Because there is a spike in hepatitis C, tuberculosis, HIV, and it’s going on deaf ears.” He reiterated his concern on Feb. 3, 2015, during his State of the State address. June 24, 2015: LePage joked that he would “like to shoot” George Danby, a cartoonist for the Bangor Daily News. The remark was made an assembly of about 200 high juniors attending Dirigo Boys State in Waterville in response to a question from Danby’s son. LePage later sent an apology note to Danby’s son. — Staff and Wire Service reports Search photos available for purchase: Photo Store → 
 
 LePage’s comment has once again catapulted the Republican governor into the national spotlight, commanding attention from The New York Times and The Washington Post – as well as from obscure white supremacist websites. 
 
 LePage also said his comment about white women couldn’t have been racist because Maine’s population is predominantly white. 
 
 “Instead of saying Maine women, I said white women,” he said. “I’m not going to apologize to the Maine women for that because if you go to Maine, you will see we are 95 percent white.” 
 
 He later added, “I apologize again. My brain was slower than my mouth.” 
 
 LePage opened the news conference by reaffirming his hostile relationship with the media. 
 
 “In one of the movies of ‘Rocky’ there’s a quote in there and I’ll just sort of paraphrase it,” he said. ” ‘Youz don’t like me and I don’t like you.’ I’m going to tell you that I sincerely mean that.” 
 
 He repeatedly blamed reporters for not “helping” his administration tackle the drug crisis, an issue that has dominated news coverage statewide and continues to be the focus of the legislative session. 
 
 Although the governor was highly critical of the media and the way it has covered the state’s heroin addiction crisis, he also asserted – as he has on numerous occasions – that he never reads Maine newspapers. 
 
 A review of the Portland Press Herald digital archive since January 2015 shows that the newspaper has published dozens of stories, editorials and guest opinion pieces on a range of topics related to heroin addiction and its impacts on the state. 
 
 They include profiles of addicts in recovery and the impact of addiction on their families; in-depth examinations of the explosive growth in overdoses and the struggle to provide access to medication that can save the lives of addicts; analyses of the lack of long-term treatment programs, resulting in longer waiting lists; LePage administration changes in the MaineCare program that reduced access to treatment for addicts who lack health insurance; the growth of diversionary programs in which police departments offer addicts access to treatment programs – many of them out of state – as an alternative to incarceration; and a detailed account of the trail that heroin follows from growers in Mexico through the hands of cartels, distributors and dealers to users in Maine. 
 
 STIRRING OUTRAGE 
 
 LePage made his racially charged comment at a town hall meeting in Bridgton on Wednesday night, the latest in a series of weekly gatherings around the state that the governor has used to promote his policy agenda. About 30 minutes into the meeting, which was rebroadcast on a local cable TV channel Thursday night, LePage responded to a question about how he was tackling substance abuse in Maine. He began talking about how much of the heroin is coming into Maine from out-of-state drug dealers. 
 
 “These are guys with the name Dee Money, Smoothie, Shifty – these types of guys – they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home,” LePage told a large crowd. “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 have to deal with down the road.” 
 
 Sharda Sekaran, the managing director of communications for the Drug Policy Alliance in Washington, D.C., said the governor’s explanation “triggered the most cynical assumptions you have about a political leader.” 
 
 She said LePage’s comment has a historical link to a drug war “built on the foundation of racist thinking,” including an 1875 anti-drug law inspired by fears that Chinese railroad workers were luring white women into opium dens and a 1914 law banning cocaine amid racist fears about African Americans. 
 
 “The drug war has traditionally been the best buddy of racism, which LePage’s offensive comments vividly reflect,” Sekaran wrote in the Huffington Post on Friday. 
 
 In an interview, Sekaran said she wasn’t surprised LePage tried to “backpedal in reaction to the backlash” about his statement, but “to pretend it’s innocuous to use the kinds of language he used, the implication was clear.” 
 
 Shay Stewart-Bouley, a Portland resident who writes a blog, Black Girl in Maine, said LePage’s comment stems from a mindset that Maine’s heroin problem should be blamed on others, in this case black people from other states. She doesn’t believe LePage when he claims he wasn’t referring to blacks when he mentioned drug dealers “Dee Money, Smoothie, Shifty.” 
 
 “Let’s be real,” she said. “Dee Money, Shifty and Smoothie are not white guys from West Falmouth.” 
 
 Stewart-Bouley said there’s no evidence that out-of-state, drug-dealing blacks are impregnating white women in Maine. She said LePage’s apology was intended for white women in Maine, and he didn’t apologize for disparaging an entire race. 
 
 Maine Republican Party Chairman Rick Bennett issued a statement after the governor’s news conference Friday, saying that the governor was right to acknowledge his mistake and “apologize for his ill-chosen words at his town hall earlier this week in Bridgton.” 
 
 He added, “It was also appropriate for him to refocus the discussion to the destructive impact of the heroin crisis in Maine, and the unfortunate consequences this crisis creates beyond those we see in daily news headlines.” 
 
 Several news outlets covered the Bridgton event, but didn’t report on the governor’s racially tinged remark. Friday, LePage seized on the attending media’s decision not to cover his comment, accusing the media that eventually did of perpetuating its history of antagonist coverage of his tenure as governor. He singled out individual reporters, both for the questions they asked Friday and for previous stories. At one point he appeared to suggest that the media was somehow culpable in a drug epidemic that claimed more lives in the first nine months of 2015 than all of 2014. 
 
 “I tried in 2014 to get 10 drug agents and you guys did nothing to help us get those agents,” he told reporters. “Since then, since then, 400 Mainers have died.” 
 
 He went on to again accuse reporters of drawing a racist connotation from his remark. 
 
 “Am I perfect? No. Do I want to be perfect? No,” he said. “Because if I was perfect I’d be a reporter. I’m sorry I’m not like you guys. I’m not a polished speaker, but I have a heart, I have a heart for Maine and Maine people.” 
 
 He added, “And if you want to make it racist, go right ahead, do whatever you want.” 
 
 LePage bristled when he was asked how African-Americans would react to his comment. 
 
 “I didn’t say anything about white or black and the traffickers. Look, you’re reading things into what I didn’t say,” he said. 
 
 Asked about the names of the drug dealers he used during the town hall, he said, “What are they, black? I don’t know. I just read the names. I don’t see them because I don’t read your newspapers.” 
 
 When asked why he mentioned race at all, he said it was unintentional. 
 
 “It was all about Maine,” he said. 
 
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– Maine's governor managed to make even his fellow Republicans cringe at a fundraiser last week, according to two GOP state lawmakers who were there. Paul LePage was discussing how President Obama blew his chance at being a great president by not touting his biracial heritage—which he hasn't done because, according to LePage, Obama "hates white people." The two sources heard the comment directly, but aren't revealing themselves for fear of retribution, the Portland Press Herald reports. "It was one little thing from a speech," says one, "but I think most people there thought it was totally inappropriate." Asked about it today, LePage denied making the comment, reports Politico. “No I never said that and you guys are all about gossip, goodbye,” said the governor, as quoted by WLBZ 2. Two other lawmakers who attended the Maine Republican Party fundraiser and meet-and-greet on August 12 say they didn't hear the remark; another attendee tells the Bangor Daily News LePage "said President Obama had an opportunity to unify the country on race, but didn’t do anything," but that he didn't hear the supposed "white people" comment. The governor is no stranger to controversial remarks; in 2011, he said the NAACP could "kiss my butt," and last year he compared the IRS to the Gestapo.