AUGUSTA, Maine - As a 24-hour deadline looms over the state budget, Maine's chief executive finds himself increasingly isolated. Lawmakers are calling for an investigation that they say could trigger impeachment proceedings, and a citizens' rally has been scheduled for Tuesday at the State House. The LePage political machine, meanwhile, continues to wage robo-call warfare against Senate Republicans who rejected his budget proposal.
The drumbeat against Gov. Paul LePage seems to grow louder with each passing day. Over the past week, some lawmakers, along with the state's largest newspapers, have called for impeachment proceedings to begin. Some also want a separate criminal investigation by the attorney general. And tomorrow, a public rally by those who support the goverrnor's ouster is scheduled at the State House.
Even supporters from his own party appear to be in short supply. Over the weekend, LePage's growing isolation from GOP lawmakers prompted the New York Times to run a story with a headline describing LePage as "a party of one." But the governor says that doesn't bother him.
"I was elected by 1.3 million people with the most votes in the history of Maine governors to come to Maine and to get rid of the status quo and the corruption, and I will continue to do that with every ounce of blood until my last day," LePage says.
LePage interprets the nearly 300,000 votes he received last year as a mandate, and he refuses to negotiate with lawmakers on either side of the aisle. The vast majority of his vetoes have been overridden with help from Republicans, and LePage's daughter, Lauren, has been making robo-calls to the constituents of GOP senators who failed to support LePage on his policy initiatives.
Conservative political consultant Lance Dutson says the tactic hasn't garnered any more support. "The alienation that's occurred by, really, declaring political war on his own party, I think that's going to cause Republicans outside of the executive branch to look toward taking the reins themselves and negotiating deals with Democrats," Dutson says.
Still, LePage has defenders within the party. "I don't discern that the governor did anything wrong here at all," says Rick Bennett, chair of the Maine Republican Party.
Bennett stands by LePage, and says that much of the controversy over the Good Will-Hinckley school flap is overblown. Instead of questioning what role LePage may have had in blocking House Speaker Mark Eves' appointment to serve as president of the facility housing a charter school, Bennett says people should consider whether Eves is truly qualified.
Still, Bennett would have preferred that LePage did not engage in bare-knuckle political fisticuffs with Republican leaders such as Senate President Michael Thibodeau. "It's never good to have it get this far out of kilter, obviously, between the governor and the legislators, but part of this is just tension between the Legislature and the executive," Bennett says.
Bennett remains optimistic that, when all is said and done, LePage will sit down with these Republican senators and mend fences. But Sen. Roger Katz, an Augusta Republican, who was also targeted by Lauren LePage's robo-calls, is less confident of that outcome.
"I think there are some scars here that are just not going to heal," Katz says. "The governor has gone after a couple of really solid allies in the Senate President and in the Senate majority leader, unfairly, in my opinion, been critical of them, and I'm not sure how that's going to play out in the next year or so."
Ultimately, Katz says the real victim in LePage's war on the Legislature could be Maine itself, as businesses perceive the state's internal political turmoil as a good reason to keep looking for other places in which to invest.
