After a single, anonymous letter ranting about North Korean brainwashing prompted Maine Gov. Paul Lepage (R) to order the removal of a mural celebrating workers from the state’s Department of Labor building (what else does he expect to see in a department of labor?), some activists talked about forming a “human chain” to protect it.
Lepage’s reaction was: “I’d laugh at them, the idiots. That’s what I would do. Come on! Get over yourselves!”
Eight Republican state senators found his comments repugnant, and said so in an op-ed published in two Maine newspapers. It was a rare criticism of a governor by members of his own party.
“For him to announce that he would ‘laugh at the idiots’ should they choose to engage in our honored tradition of civil disobedience is another personal attack that only serves to further lower the bar of our public discourse,” the senators wrote. “We may disagree with civil disobedience in this particular instance, but it is a fundamental right each and every one of us might engage in if we found the issue important enough.”
While the eight senators include critics of labor, they wrote, “We may find ourselves on opposite sides of an issue or vote, but we are all working to achieve what we feel is best for our great state. We are not the enemy of labor and labor is certainly not an enemy to us.”
