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Maine Governor Paul LePage: The (unlikely) uniter

Lepage’s confrontational style unites Maine lawmakers

Reuters

PORTLAND, Maine — You may know Republican Paul LePage of Maine as the intemperate governor who in 2011 told the NAACP to “kiss my butt.”

Or who, as a Tea Party-aligned pol in a state that consistently votes to send Democrats to the White House, won two gubernatorial elections, in 2010 and 2014.

Or the one who said this year he would veto every Democrat-sponsored bill until legislators stop blocking his plan to amend the state Constitution to eliminate the income tax.

Or as the defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by the speaker of the House alleging the governor, “acting out of personal rage, vindictiveness, and partisan malice, in June 2015 . . . blackmailed a private school that serves at-risk children in order to force it to fire its President, the Speaker.”

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Or as the chief executive who tried to veto 65 bills after his legal window for doing so had closed, and then asked the justices on the state’s highest court whether his vetoes were properly delivered. (They weren’t, the justices said last week.)

But all of LePage’s vituperative language and antagonistic actions have had a surprising effect, political insiders of both parties say.

They have pushed a Legislature divided by partisanship together, finding common cause, reaffirming a long Maine tradition of political moderation, and raising questions about what comes next.

State Senator Thomas Saviello, a centrist Republican, said while LePage’s modus operandi differs from the conciliatory deal-making traditions for which Maine politics is known, the governor hasn’t changed the fundamental essence of the Pine Tree State.

“Maine always figures out how to get along and get things done.” Saviello said. “And if Paul LePage did anything, he encouraged that this year. He drove our leaders, Republican and Democrats, together.”

House Speaker Mark W. Eves said LePage’s antagonism with the Legislature was the catalyst for bringing lawmakers of both parties in sync.

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While this year’s legislative session was “one of the most highly partisan sessions, it’s also been one of the most bipartisan sessions,” he said, ticking through policies, from tax changes to boosting education funding, that he said the Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate were able to put into law.

While LePage has never had a kumbaya relationship with lawmakers, several legislators said their dealings with the governor were particularly bitter this year, with LePage taking aim not just at Democrats, but also at Republicans who didn’t back a tax overhaul plan he proposed.

Senator Andre Cushing, a conservative Republican in Senate leadership, said some GOP lawmakers felt blindsided by the governor’s budget, which included significant tax changes.

And, he continued, while Republicans generally support the core policies LePage advocates — such as lowering taxes and reining in government — many GOP legislators heard concerns from constituents that led them to not back LePage’s proposal.

After the Legislature passed a budget out of step with LePage’s plan, he said, “the governor expressed his great displeasure that we did so, and it sort of went downhill from there.”

(“Great displeasure” might be an understatement. At a press briefing after the vote, the governor lofted a squeaky plastic pig to illustrate the pork in the budget, accused lawmakers of holding secret meetings, and called the government “corrupt.”)

But, the senator continued, the rancor compelled reaching across the aisle: “The leadership took their responsibility to govern as a divided legislature very, very seriously.”

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In response to questions about this year’s acrimony, a LePage spokesman responded with a blistering statement about the culture of lawmakers in Augusta, the state capital, and the news media’s portrayal of the governor.

Peter A. Steele, the spokesman, said the media focus on the same small group of insiders who oppose the governor, but never cover the 1.3 million Maine people LePage was elected to serve. The governor, Steele said, is a career businessman who has shaken up the establishment.

Whatever their political philosophies, too many politicians “leave their allegiance to the Maine people outside the State House door. The governor has exposed Augusta’s go-along-to-get-along, business-as-usual mentality to the Maine people,” he continued. “Holding them accountable for their actions is something very new and very foreign to Maine’s career politicians.”

Perhaps the ne plus ultra of the recent discord was an almost hourlong proceeding at a stately courthouse in Portland, which brought representatives of all three branches of Maine state government to the same room, arguing over constitutional nuances.

LePage had asked the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court to advise him on the status of 65 bills he had tried to veto. At issue was whether the Legislature had, earlier this year, adjourned in such a way that prevented him from returning bills with his veto — and, thus, whether his later attempt at vetoing the bills was valid.

Among the most forceful arguments against the governor’s position came from a lawyer who jointly represented the Democratic speaker and the Republican Senate president.

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And although the judicial opinion was a rebuke to LePage, and the Legislature overrode several of the governor’s actual vetoes, LePage allies say no one should be quick to count the governor out.

They underscore his election victory with 48 percent of the vote in a hard-fought three-way race in November.

“What sent shudders through the establishment in 2014 was that LePage got the greatest number of votes of any gubernatorial candidate in the history of Maine” said Brent Littlefield, a LePage adviser and political strategist on both on his campaigns. “You’ve got all these people out there rooting for him.”

Allies note that Maine is politically divided between some Democratic urban enclaves and vast stretches of former mill towns and rural land, where the politics of self-reliance LePage espouses resonate.

They point to his unlikely life story threaded with grit and determination: pulling himself up from grinding childhood poverty, including time as a homeless runaway, to profound and lasting business and political achievement.

And backers acknowledge he speaks his mind but, they say, the image of him in the press is not the true LePage.

Allan Rancourt, president of Kennebec Federal Savings in Waterville, where LePage was mayor, has known the governor for 35 years and said the man he knows is “not cantankerous, he’s not bombastic, not even close. He’s got a big heart and he’s a softie.”

Rancourt described the state’s chief executive as “very intellectual,” a voracious reader and so hard-charging he only sleeps for five hours a night.

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From LePage’s victorious runs for municipal office to his two successful bids for governor, he said, “Everybody counts him out all the time.” Rancourt continued, despite obstacles that appear insurmountable, LePage always finds a way to win.

But Lance Dutson, a Republican strategist who recently helped form an anti-LePage group, said this year’s dramas marked a shift for LePage, his political capital diminished, and his power sharply ebbing.

“There’s a changing of the guard, a watershed period here. The LePage era is over,” Dutson said. “He’s acted his way into near obsolescence.”

But Steele, the spokesman for the term-limited governor, fired back, saying Dutson is only the most recent in a long line of pundits who have “greatly exaggerated reports of the death of Paul LePage.”

“The LePage era,” Steele said, “is just beginning.”

Joshua Miller can be reached at joshua.miller@globe.com.