And he gleefully urged Trump, as president, to be more “authoritarian.” 6
He refused to implement Medicaid expansion-despite 60 percent of Maine voters having favored it in a 2017 referendum-creating what Robyn Merrill, of Maine Equal Justice Partners, describes as a perverse situation in which the state’s political muscle was used to “roll back help to people.” Like Trump, LePage was infamously hostile to the press. He largely dismantled the state’s public health system. The ex-governor’s reactionary political résumé doesn’t end there. I think Governor LePage either didn’t understand the implications this harmful practice had, or he did understand and agreed that LGBTQ people should be subject to this harmful practice.
He was the first governor in the nation to veto legislation banning conversion therapy. And seemingly every day he’s trying to find the next thing by which to sow division and chaos. “LePage is not collaborative,” Fecteau says.
