Awright, look. Here's the thing about Paul LePage. He wouldn't be governor of a state where smart people wrote the constitution. I'm pretty sure I've explained this before, probably in whichever context first exposed you to the word "Fuckstick" in the context of Maine's one and only governor, but just to recap for those who came in late, Paulie LeP won his first gubernatorial election with 39 percent of the vote, which shouldn't even be allowed. And the reason he did it—and then did it again four years later, with a slightly larger non-majority—is because first Maine's Democrats fielded weaksauce candidates against him, and second a colossally uncaring sack of ego* called Eliot Cutler jumped in as an indie/"third party" (in sarcasm quotes because the "party" he claimed to be part of isn't really one, it's just a label for people who don't think they can hack it as completely partiless independents like Angus King to slap on themselves) candidate and split the Not Fuckstick vote.

The result both times, because Maine's constitution does not require the person who wins the governor's office to do so with a majority, is that we've got Paul LePage. So now the country has Paul LePage, and because most people outside Maine don't know how our gubernatorial election system works, they assume a majority of Mainers must want it that way. Which is great! Not enough people outside the state thought we were all ignorant shitkickers before this. It's always good to do some outreach.

There is also no recall mechanism for Maine's governor, so unless he were to get caught doing something that's actually an impeachable crime, we're stuck with him for the duration. Just being shit at governoring is not sufficient grounds to get him out of office.

And he is shit at governoring, make no mistake. The fact that he's a public relations nightmare for the entire State of Maine is the smallest corner of the disaster that is Paul LePage. He doesn't really understand—or care—what the governor of the state is supposed to be for. Often, he'll get a hair across his ass about someone or something in the Legislature and decide that he's just going to veto everything he's presented with for the next week, even if it's bills he caused to be introduced in the first place. This is the executive-branch equivalent of holding your breath until your face turns blue because you didn't get an ice cream. Once, he got into such a snit over a Democrat winning a bye-election to fill an unscheduled vacancy in the Legislature (I forget which side) that he allowed the newly-minted legislator to make the trip to Augusta with her family and friends in tow, and then refused to swear her in until about 30 milliseconds before it would've been illegal (which was of course long after the time he'd had his staff schedule it for). It's like having the Burgess Meredith Penguin from the 1960s Batman TV show as the governor of your state.

A couple of years ago, when LePage first made minor national headlines for something (I think it was his dismissal of concerns over bisphenol A in drinking water containers with words to the effect of, "Big deal, so a few women might grow little beards or something"), friends of mine from out of state compared him to New Jersey governor Chris Christie, lately newsworthy for the apparent ease with which he's settled into his new role as Donald Trump's chief hunchbacked minion. Their tendency was to perceive LePage as a kind of minor-league Christie, but I have always maintained that they have it backward. In terms of sheer fuckheadery, Christie is the bush-league version of LePage. If he had done something like that George Washington Bridge thing, Paul LePage wouldn't have tried to cover it up, he'd have called a fucking press conference. "Enjoying your new traffic, Fort Lee? You're welcome! How d'ya like me now?"

The man is quite simply a grade-A sonofabitch. The fact that he was actually, legally elected governor of the state where I live—twice!—through a convergence of badly written electoral procedures, misguided-at-best attempts to reform the two-party system, and evil being better at getting out the vote than good means I can't allow myself the luxury of thinking the current situation in re the presidential election is funny.

--G.
* Or, to borrow a beautifully turned phrase I saw in a tweet directed at... I forget if it was Newt Gingrich or Mike Huckabee... one time, "Hefty bag full of coleslaw".
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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