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“I registered to vote last week and today I picked up these shiny new plates for my car. EDGECOMB — Former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who moved to Florida to enjoy warm weather and lower taxes after leaving office, has reestablished his residency in Maine. Ignoring Republicans’ concernsthat he was to blame for the party’s weak midterms showing, Donald J. Trump announced his third bid for the presidency. He told radio hosts shortly before the 2018 election, when voters picked Democrat Janet Mills to succeed him, that he had every intention of leaving the Pine Tree State.
In violation of Florida election law, LePage, who is registeredto vote in Maine, failed to notify Flagler County that he is no longer a resident of that state, where he registered to vote in 2019. Mills has hammered that theme in her messaging as well, using her campaign ads and speeches to resurrect LePage’s past comments and conduct while in office. Speaking at a fundraising event in Portland on Thursday, Mills reminded supporters that LePage once expressed openness to overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark supreme court case that established federal protections for abortion access. The supreme court did indeed reverse Roe in June, and LePage has since sent mixed messages about his stance on abortion policy. Gov. LePage accused of voter intimidation after he says college students must establish residency if they choose to vote in Maine.
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LePage faced no primary opposition, and was the Republican nominee to run against Mills in the November general election. In April 2021, he announced that he would be a candidate for governor again in 2022. He faced no primary opposition but lost to incumbent Janet Mills by 13 percentage points in the November general election. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country. The former governor’s residency statushad not been a major campaign issue because Maine’s constitutional requirement is fairly loose.
In February 2019, the Portland Press Herald reported that LePage and his staff had spent at least $22,000 of tax-payer money to stay at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C., a luxury hotel owned by President Trump's family. During his last two years in office, LePage and his staff spent approximately $170,000 in out-of-state travel. In comparison, LePage's predecessor, Governor John Baldacci, spent approximately $45,000 during the last two years of his tenure. The eldest son of eighteen children of Theresa (née Gagnon) and Gerard LePage, both of French Canadian descent, he grew up speaking French in an impoverished home with an abusive father who was a mill worker.
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In an April 29 interview with radio host Howie Carr, LePage had said he was going to fly to Maine the following Saturday and would be “becoming a resident of Maine again.” He also told Carr that he plans to challenge Gov. Janet Mills in 2022. The couple have shuttled between Maine and Florida since before LePage was elected in 2010. Ann LePage was listed as a home buyer in Ormond Beach in 2008, when her husband was mayor of Waterville. Months after Mrs. LePage was cleared of wrongdoing, Ms. DeRosby joined the family’s move into the Maine governor’s mansion, according to local reports. When Ms. DeRosby died in 2015, her obituary said that she had “spent the last eight years of her life residing” with her daughter and Mr. LePage.
Proposals he favors include putting photos of cardholders on the card to prevent their sale by the holder, an idea that he proposed after hearing of several incidents where EBT cards turned up in drug busts. He has stated that such fraud is a large problem and he will devote resources to investigating it and generating further proposals to combat it. He has also suggested that he would be willing to shut down the entire EBT program if the federal government will not allow Maine to take measures to combat fraud. LePage was opposed to efforts to change Maine's voting system from plurality voting to ranked choice voting, even though it was ruled unconstitutional with regards to elections to state offices.
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The restaurant owner stated hiring LePage was not a publicity stunt, citing the difficulty of hiring new workers. LePage and Ann DeRosby have had conflicts with Florida tax authorities since they have claimed full-time residence in the state while not fulfilling the requirement to live there for the required amount of time to do so. But Mr. LePage and his wife, Ann LePage, who have owned property in Florida for over a decade, have themselves benefited from that state’s tax laws while living in the Maine governor’s mansion, and again as he campaigns to return to the job. From 2009 to 2015, and also from 2018 through the end of this year, the couple received property tax breaks reserved for permanent Florida residents, public records show.
He later worked at a rubber company and a meat-packing plant and was a short order cook and bartender. LePage was the only person among his parents and siblings to graduate from the 8th grade. The LePages sold their Waterville home when they moved to the Blaine House, keeping the homestead exemption in Florida through 2015, the year Ann LePage’s mother died. The LePages are set to save $8,500 in total taxes under the arrangement by carrying exemptions from 2009 to 2015 and from 2018 through this year. Ann LePage began winding down the tax break this June, saying she and her husband were no longer living in Florida. The LePages are expected to save $8,500 in total taxes under the arrangement by granting exemptions from 2009 to 2015 and from 2018 to this year.
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In 2010, Ann LePage was initially cited in Florida after claiming a property exemption on homes there and in Waterville. Her campaign described it as an inadvertent mistake that would be corrected, but she was eventually cleared by officials there because her sick mother lived in the house, meaning the property was eligible for tax relief. Former Gov. Paul LePage and his wife, Ann LePage, still receive property tax relief for Florida permanent residents, The New York Times reported on Saturday. Maine Democrats are reacting to a report in theNew York Timesreport today that found Paul LePage claimed he was a resident of Florida while serving as Governor of Maine in order to qualify for a property tax break on his Florida property.
Depicted in an old real estate listing is the house at 40 Gale St. in Ormond Beach, Florida, that Paul and Ann LePage purchased in 2018. LePage insisted that he never said that Mr. Trump had not won the 2020 election. Rob Caldwell on Channel 6 asked him that several times during an interview that aired on the 207 show. The snowbird who lives in Florida in the winter has registered to vote in the Sunshine State, the Sun Journal reports. But he also clashed with the media on the issue after he initially refused to answer questions about his wife’s residency status, why his name was not on either deed, and whether he paid in-state tuition rates for his children attending Florida colleges. As of midday Thursday, a year after registering in Maine, LePage is still listed as a registered voter living at 40 Gale Lane in Ormond Beach, a home his wife Ann purchased in 2018 and still owns.
On March 23, 2011, LePage sparked protests when he announced that he planned to remove a large mural depicting the history of the state's labor movement from the lobby of the Maine Department of Labor offices. Despite protests, on March 28 it was disclosed that the murals had been removed over the weekend. The Portland Museum of Art issued a statement that said LePage's decision has tarnished the state's reputation as a haven for artists.
“I’ll be a resident of Florida if Janet Mills wins,” said LePage, who was prohibited from running for a third term.
The situation spurred statewide backlash including a federal investigation of the alleged intimidation, which concluded that LePage's administration improperly acted with "what could be perceived as a bias toward employers". LePage expressed an intent to reform welfare eligibility requirements, though he did not specify how he would do so. He also supports lifetime limits on welfare support, requiring recipients to perform work in the community, and a tiered payment system that gradually removes benefits as recipients earn more money working, rather than cutting them off entirely at a certain income level. He stated this view regarding the case of Ethan Henderson, a 10-week-old baby who was allegedly killed by his father. He also has expressed support for giving the death penalty to drug dealers whose drugs cause a fatal overdose.
In June 2015, Good Will-Hinckley, a charitable organization for at-risk youths that runs two charter schools, hired Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves to be their next president. LePage, however, threatened to withhold $500,000 of state funding for the school if they hired Eves, due to his voting record against charter schools in Maine. LePage's choice to do so was labeled as "blackmail" as well as "political interference". The incident was subject to a federal investigation, but no charges were issued. Some Democrats in the Legislature launched an effort to impeach LePage over this and other matters on January 14, 2016, but the effort was indefinitely postponed, effectively killing it, on a 96–52 vote. He has called for repeal of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, saying he believes it is unconstitutional, and had encouraged Maine's attorney general William Schneider to join the federal lawsuit by other state attorneys general challenging the bill.
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His plurality wins and unpopular tenure contributed to Maine voters changing their voting system from plurality voting to ranked-choice voting in a 2016 ballot initiative even though it is currently not applicable for gubernatorial elections. While the tax issue does not appear to violate state laws or endanger Paul LePage’s Maine residency, it emerges in the homestretch of the Republican’s campaign against Democratic Gov. Janet Mills. He registered to vote in Florida on her inauguration daybefore returning in mid-2020to declare Maine residency while mapping out his political comeback.
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