When Maine Had America's Best Governor
For Throwback Wednesday, saying goodbye to a (mostly) good guy
Seven years ago — and before he made some really asinine comments about drugs and race — I wrote a column about Paul LePage. The governor of the Pine Tree State embodied a lot of what I look for in a chief executive: private-sector experience, no quarter asked of or given to the media, pro-taxpayer, and willing to tell the truth about welfare.
Yesterday, LePage’s political comeback foundered, and he lost to the kook-left incumbent by double digits. So for Throwback Wednesday, let’s bid adieu to a Maine original.
Paul LePage had a Thanksgiving surprise for beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in his state: no more junk food.
Seventy-two hours before Turkey Day, Maine’s governor directed his Department of Health and Human Services to ask the feds “to allow the state to waive federal rules allowing for the purchase of candy and soft drinks with SNAP benefits.”
LePage’s request to make food stamps verboten for Coca-Cola and M&Ms is just the latest in his administration’s litany of common-sense, limited-government policies. The governor’s not perfect — he’s a committed drug warrior, and his over-the-top pugnaciousness frequently hinders his legislative agenda — but LePage has consistently pushed for welfare reforms, deregulation, and tax relief in his old, cold, no-growth, and deep-blue state.
A 2014 Portland Press Herald profile noted that the governor’s youth was scarred by “violence and tragedy.” His French-Canadian family was poor, but adherence to Catholic dogma on birth control kept the babies coming. His father, an alcoholic, was abusive. LePage left home at 11, found a surrogate family, and survived by doing odd jobs.
All that ugliness didn’t plunge the future governor into an attitude of perpetual victimization. The Press Herald wrote that he developed “a viewpoint on how one ought to succeed in modern society … a formula in which the power of personal responsibility will always trump the ability of government to help.” He earned a B.S. and an M.B.A., and prospered as a businessman. In 2003, he was elected mayor or Waterville. In 2010, the GOPer won election in a state that hadn’t picked a Republican for its chief executive in two decades.
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