Mr LePage was asked about a statement he made in January, in which he blamed the state’s heroin problem on “guys by the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” who “come from Connecticut and New York”.
“They come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave,” he said.
Speaking on Wednesday, he denied it was racist, but said that since January he had been putting together a binder cataloguing drug arrests in the state, and that “90-plus per cent of those pictures in my book, and it’s a three-ringed binder, are black and Hispanic people”.
Asked by reporters to provide the binder, Mr LePage replied: “Let me tell you something: Black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers. You ought to look into that.”
He then stormed off, telling the reporters: “You make me so sick.”
Maine daily newspaper the Portland Press Herald has reportedly filed a Freedom of Information request for the governor’s binder.
