Paul LePage
Paul Richard LePage is an American businessman and politician who served as the 74th governor of Maine from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the mayor of Waterville, Maine, from 2004 to 2011 and as a city councilor for Waterville from 1998 to 2002.
LePage was elected mayor of Waterville in 2003 and reelected in 2008. He ran for governor of Maine in the 2010 election, winning with 37 percent of the vote in a five-candidate race. He was re-elected with a stronger plurality, 48 percent of the vote, in a three-candidate election in 2014. During his tenure as governor, he made extensive use of his veto power, vetoing 652 bills as of July 2018, more than the total by all Maine governors over the previous 100 years combined. LePage was known for making controversial remarks on various issues.
LePage was unable to seek a third term due to Maine's term limit laws and was succeeded by Democrat Janet Mills. After leaving office he announced his retirement from politics and established residency in Florida. In 2021, LePage re-established residency in Maine and announced a third run for governor. He faced no primary opposition but lost to Mills by 13 percentage points in the 2022 general election. After his loss he returned to Florida. LePage once again returned to Maine, and on May 5, 2025, he announced his candidacy for Maine's 2nd congressional district in 2026.
Early life and education
LePage was born in Lewiston, Maine, on October 9, 1948. The eldest son of eighteen children of Theresa 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. His father drank heavily and terrorized the children, and his mother was too intimidated to stop him. His brother Moe later said of their father, "He was an evil man." At age eleven, after his father beat him and broke his nose, he ran away from home and lived on the streets of Lewiston, where he at times stayed in horse stables and at a strip joint. After spending roughly two years homeless, he began to earn a living shining shoes, washing dishes at a café, and hauling boxes for a truck driver. 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. He graduated from Lewiston High School in 1967.LePage applied to Husson College in Bangor, but was rejected due to a poor verbal score on the SAT because English was his second language. He has said that State Representative Peter Snowe—the first husband of former U.S. senator Olympia Snowe—persuaded Husson to give LePage a written exam in French, which allowed LePage to show his reading comprehension skills and gain admission. At Husson, LePage honed and improved his English-language skills and became editor of the college newspaper. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in business administration in finance and accounting and later earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Maine.
Early business and political career
After graduating with a Master of Business Administration from the University of Maine, LePage began his business career working for a lumber company in New Brunswick, Canada, that was owned by his first wife's family from 1972 to 1979. He subsequently worked for Scott Paper Company in Winslow, Maine.In the 1980s, LePage founded the management consulting firm LePage & Kasevich Inc., which provided services to struggling businesses. In 1996, he was hired as general manager of Marden's, a Maine-based discount retail chain.
LePage entered local politics when he was elected to the Waterville City Council in 1997, serving until 2002. He was reelected to the council in 1999.
Mayor of Waterville
In 2003, LePage sought the office of mayor of Waterville, running against Democratic candidate Charles Kellenberger and independent Daniel Dufour. LePage won the election with 40 percent of the vote.LePage took office as mayor on January 6, 2004, succeeding Nelson Madore. As mayor, he implemented administrative reforms, reduced municipal taxes, and increased the city's reserve fund from $1 million to $10 million. During his tenure, he had policy disagreements with Democratic Governor John Baldacci on issues including immigration enforcement and state tax policy.
In 2008, LePage was reelected mayor, defeating Democratic challenger Rosemary Winslow by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent. He resigned from the mayoral position in January 2011 upon taking office as governor.
Governor of Maine
Elections
2010
On September 22, 2009, LePage announced that he would be seeking the 2010 Republican nomination for governor of Maine. He won 38% of the vote in a seven-way primary election, despite being outspent ten-to-one by his closest challenger. John Morris, LePage's campaign chief-of-staff, credited LePage's win with a campaign strategy that he referred to as the "three onlys" theme before the June primary election. This theme focused on particular aspects of LePage's biography that supposedly set him apart from the other candidates. These were, according to Morris, LePage "was the only candidate who had a compelling life story,... the only candidate who had a successful experience as a chief executive officer of a government entity,... the only candidate who was the executive of a prosperous Maine business."In the general election, LePage was backed by local Tea Party activists and faced Democratic state senator Libby Mitchell, and three independents – Eliot Cutler, Shawn Moody, and Kevin Scott. During the campaign, he told an audience that when he became governor, they could expect to see newspaper headlines stating, "LePage Tells Obama to Go to Hell". He was subsequently criticized by Libby Mitchell's campaign as being disrespectful towards the office of the president.
With 94% of precincts reporting on the day after the election, the Bangor Daily News declared LePage the winner, carrying 38.1% of the votes. Independent Cutler was in second place with 36.7% of the votes, while Democrat Mitchell was a distant third with 19%. Moody and Scott had 5% and 1%, respectively. LePage was the first popularly elected, Franco-American governor of Maine and the first Republican since John R. McKernan Jr.'s re-election in 1990. In his victory speech, LePage promised he would shrink government, lower taxes, decrease business regulation, and put "Maine people ahead of politics".
2014
On May 7, 2013, LePage stated that it was likely that he would seek re-election in 2014. He had already filed paperwork to form a campaign committee in August 2011 to be able to hold fundraisers to raise campaign funds. On June 21, 2013, when asked if he was concerned about hurting his re-election campaign, he replied, "Who said I'm running?", and, that "everything was on the table"—including entering the race for Maine's Second Congressional District; retiring; or "going back to Marden's to stock shelves". He later backed off the reference to entering a congressional run, but stated that he would have a family meeting to discuss the possibility of him not seeking re-election, citing the passage of a 2013–2014 budget by the legislature—in override of his veto of it—as the type of devastating mistake that Maine could not recover from. At a fundraiser with former Florida governor Jeb Bush on July 2, he told supporters that he was indeed running for re-election.At 12:04 AM on November 5, the Bangor Daily News declared that Paul LePage had won re-election to a second term, defeating Democratic Congressman Mike Michaud and independent candidate Eliot Cutler. He received 48.2% of the vote.
2022
LePage unsuccessfully ran for a third non-consecutive term in 2022. LePage had previously indicated his interest in the 2022 election based on the implementation of Maine's Medicaid expansion referendum. On July 5, 2021, he officially announced his candidacy for governor. He was later endorsed by Maine's Republican U.S. Senator, Susan Collins. LePage faced no primary opposition, and was the Republican nominee to run against Mills in the November general election. LePage lost 56% to 42%.Tenure
As governor, LePage attempted to roll back child labor laws, proposing a $5.25 subminimum wage. He also proposed that children aged 12 and up should be able to work. In a speech at the 73rd annual Maine Agricultural Trades Show, he stated his view supporting child labor adding "If the revenues go up, I can go golfing. If not, I'm going to have to continue working 80 hours a week." LePage was the first Maine governor to use social media to promote the annual State of the State address, when he used Twitter to send several tweets previewing his February 5, 2013, speech. As Governor, LePage issued 642 vetoes, which broke the record of 118 set by Governor James B. Longley and was more than all his predecessors since 1917 combined. Most of LePage's vetoes have come since 2013, when Democrats regained control of the Legislature from the Republicans. In the 2015 session of the Legislature, LePage promised to veto every bill sponsored by a Democrat, regardless of its merits, in retaliation for the rejection of his proposal for a constitutional amendment referendum to eliminate Maine's income tax. LePage later expanded his veto threat to all bills sponsored by all legislators in order to force needing a 2/3 vote on them for passage. He stated that he feels it is the only way he can "get the most representation that I can for the people of the state of Maine" and that Democrats had convinced Republicans to sponsor bills to get around his initial veto threat.LePage initially endorsed Chris Christie for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, but after Christie dropped out LePage endorsed Donald Trump just hours after Christie in February 2016. Earlier in February, LePage had urged Republican governors to draft an open letter "to the people", disavowing Trump and his politics.