Politics
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Former Gov. Paul LePage used his first radio appearance since announcing a bid for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District to claim the 2022 election he lost to Gov. Janet Mills was “bought” and featured illegal voting.
The Republican became well known for his controversial statements while in the Blaine House from 2011 to 2019, but Thursday’s interview on WVOM was the first time that LePage has made baseless allegations about the 2022 election in which Mills beat him by 13 percentage points.
LePage’s comments get at larger questions of how the 76-year-old will seek to fit into a national party remade in the image of President Donald Trump. The 2nd District has voted for Trump three times but is represented by fourth-term Democrat Jared Golden. It is not yet clear if Golden will seek reelection or make a bid to succeed Mills as governor.
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LePage was one of Trump’s earliest supporters in 2016 and echoed Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020. However, the former governor did not repeat similar claims following his defeat to Mills. He even told a party activist that Trump’s denialism hurt Republicans in 2022.
During the Thursday morning radio interview, WVOM host George Hale alluded to the 2022 gubernatorial race by noting LePage’s tenure before telling him “you didn’t have good luck the last time around.”
“Well, no. It was bought,” LePage replied. “We had noncitizens and undocumented voting.”
Hale quickly pivoted to asking about national issues in the race, with LePage zigzagging between different subjects and complaints about Golden, Mills and Democrats during the 15-minute interview. At one point, LePage brought up voting again by claiming the Democratic Party “is using taxpayer money to register Democrat voters that are noncitizens.”
“And that has been proven time and again,” LePage added, without providing evidence.
LePage and his campaign strategist did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday on whether he has proof of noncitizens voting in his 2022 election. That is illegal in federal and state elections. National studies have found noncitizen voting to be extremely rare, with the libertarian Cato Institute pegging the percentage of noncitizens voting at close to zero.
The topic arose around last year’s election after the conservative Maine Wire published a story based on leaked health records claiming six people marked as noncitizens voted here since 2016. It remains unclear how those people were registered to vote, and they also may have severe disabilities.
LePage, a former Waterville mayor, covered numerous other topics during Thursday’s interview, arguing that Democrats “destroyed” the welfare system in Maine after he “fixed” it, redoubling his support for a voter ID law in the state and calling for people legally in the U.S. to be allowed to work immediately.
LePage said Trump “is doing the right thing” with his aggressive tariff policies that have unsettled markets and caused major retailers like Walmart to raise prices, a notable statement given LePage opposed Trump’s Canadian softwood lumber tariffs when the two overlapped in office. But he said he disagrees with Trump’s repetitive call to make Canada the 51st state.
“That’s a big country up there, and it’s cold,” LePage joked. “I lived up there. You don’t want Canada as a 51st state.”
