PORTLAND, Maine — At a meet-the-governor event at an Exchange Street gallery Friday afternoon, Gov. Paul LePage demonstrated a hardline on domestic violence, lamenting the early, lenient treatment by the National Football League of running back Ray Rice, when Aucocisco Galleries owner Andy Verzosa brought up the subject.
LePage has personal experience with abuse. He grew up the oldest of 18 children in Lewiston with an abusive and alcoholic father. His story seemed to resonate with the crowd.
“After I ran away, my brothers and sisters put up with it. … My mother was a saint,” he said.
“[Rice] was only suspended for two games. My feeling is he should have been banished immediately,” said LePage, who added sharply, “I have zero tolerance for domestic violence.”
If re-elected, he pledged to create a bill that would forbid someone charged with domestic violence to enter a plea bargain. A second offense would mean a five-year jail sentence. Beyond incarceration, LePage wants to create a batterer’s program to rehabilitate offenders.
“You have to take these people out of society. They are not warriors, they are absolute barbarians,” he said, encouraging the men in the state to stand up against domestic violence, stating that the vast majority of assaults in the country are caused by males.
A cross section of the city had gathered in Aucocisco Galleries to meet LePage.
“I have never been in a room with him,” said Arthur Fink of Peaks Island, who identified himself as an undecided voter.
Many sympathized with LePage, and some mentioned his unprompted story of his father kicking his mother when she was seven months pregnant, which he shared live on WJJB radio Wednesday morning. A week later, she gave birth to a stillborn baby, he told the radio hosts.
“I blame my dad,” he said.
Fink wanted to ask the incumbent, who closed out the final meet-the-governor series event at the gallery, about the lack of respectful dialogue at the top — specifically, he said, “antagonistic bullying” from the governor himself.
LePage, dressed in a pink tie, skirted the question during the informal 45-minute discussion, leaving Fink feeling dissed.
“It was a complete ignoring of my question,” he grumbled afterwards. “I didn’t hear any big ideas to turn this state around.”
Others in the intimate crowd of 40, like Frank Reilly, a Portland playwright, who attended all three candidate forums orchestrated by gallery owner Verzosa, walked away a little more impressed.
“He was genuine,” said Reilly. “And that’s what I look for in my characters.”
As for the governor’s own fighting record in politics?
“I never go out and start a battle,” he told the crowd, “but I won’t back down from one.”
That pugnacious attitude often gets him in trouble, and LePage knows it. Barbara Bush once told him: “This state really needs you, but for the next year can you just zip it,” the governor related with a smirk.
Besides domestic violence, the other issue hampering the state, according to the incumbent, is local control. Municipalities “make all decisions locally and don’t want to work with neighbors,” said LePage, encouraging politicians and citizens to think countywide instead.
“That’s the problem with Maine,” he said.
In a one-on-one session afterward, LePage said the city of Bangor has worked well with the state to establish a business-friendly community, but Portland — a powerful economic center in Maine — doesn’t work with the state nearly as well.
“It’s the big gorilla,” he said.
Verzosa, a Portland native whose gallery has been open for 15 years, said that comment was “bananas.”
To Verzosa, whose gallery closed on Friday for good because of his upcoming move to Connecticut, “Portland is the cultural and economic engine of the state. It does a good job of attracting businesses.”
Surrounded by original art, the relaxed setting generated a few unscripted moments.
LePage balked that the price of the Bernard Langlais block relief on the wall behind him was sky high.
“This costs $10,000. … I’m a woodworker, can someone tell me how to rearrange them?” he said.
