"This is what I call the 'hate season,' '' LePage said at a recent campaign event held in a dusty gravel pit here, where he put on a white hard hat to be endorsed by a contractors' trade association. "For the next few months it's going to be brutal out there.''
"Brutal" is also how critics describe LePage's record since 2010, when he became governor with 39% of the vote in a three-way race. LePage cut welfare rolls, vetoed Medicaid expansion, passed an income tax cut and then reduced municipal revenue sharing to pay for it — all the while calling legislators "idiots,'' state workers "corrupt,'' and telling the NAACP to "kiss my butt.''
"He's piggish and bullheaded and not really listening to what the people are saying,'' says Rebecca Kowaloff, 30, a doctor and Democratic voter in Portland.
LePage attributes his style to his Dickensian childhood. The oldest of 17 kids in a poor French-speaking family in industrial Lewiston, as a young boy he ran from a violent father and was homeless for two years until other families and mentors helped him through to college.
"You can't be on the streets at 11 years old, and try to make your way through life, and be the most polished guy,'' he says. "But I'll tell you one thing, I am the most honest.''
Democrats believe they have a strong candidate this year in Michaud, 59. A third-generation paper mill worker who never attended college and stayed on the job until he went to Washington in 2002, he can compete with LePage for blue-collar and Franco-American loyalty.
