Paul LePage says he’d veto 15-week abortion ban in debate with Janet Mills

By Michael Shepherd, Bangor Daily News Staff

LEWISTON — Former Gov. Paul LePage said he would veto a 15-week abortion ban in a first debate with Gov. Janet Mills on Tuesday that featured feisty exchanges on the economy and the opioid crisis ahead of their high-profile November election.

The debate between the two was much anticipated in political circles. During LePage’s time as governor from 2011 to 2019, Mills served six years as attorney general. She was a top Democratic foil to many of the bombastic Republican’s policies and won the 2018 election to succeed him by running on overturning much of his legacy.

Even before that election, LePage was publicly floating the Blaine House return bid that he launched last year. He has turned in recent weeks from a lower-key campaign to a media blitz hammering Mills on subjects including the economy, education and the opioid crisis.

Abortion and those topics dominated Tuesday evening’s debate, which was hosted by Maine Public, the Portland Press Herald and the Sun Journal at the Franco Center in downtown Lewiston and also featured independent Sam Hunkler. With more than 10 minutes until the candidates went live, LePage came on stage and greeted Mills as she tested her microphone.

It turned quickly. At one point, LePage called Mills “a liar.” But it was the former governor who was checked by Maine Public reporter Steve Mistler after saying his rival was handing out crack pipes. His campaign was more precise around a news conference on drugs last week, criticizing Mills for a state website that links to a harm-reduction group that provides them.

Mills has staked much of her race on defending abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to end federal abortion rights. LePage often spoke at anti-abortion rallies as governor, but this summer, he said he had “no reason” to challenge Maine’s permissive abortion laws while not ruling out signing restrictions if he and Republicans retake Augusta.

Toward the end of a lengthy exchange with both Mills and moderators in which LePage at one point said he did not understand a question, the former governor said he would veto a 15-week abortion ban like those passed in Florida and Mississippi. 

He went on to praise the 1993 law that codified Roe v. Wade in Maine by allowing abortion until viability. In a recent survey by the evangelical Christian Civic League of Maine, LePage said abortion should be restricted, although he couched it as supporting limits now on the books.

“I believe the bill that’s in place now is a good bill,” he said.

LePage still distinguished himself from Mills by reiterating opposition to MaineCare funding for abortions, a measure the Democratic governor signed in the first year of her tenure. She noted his answer to the survey and said she could be trusted to defend abortion rights.

“My veto pen will stand in the way of any restrictions on the right to abortion,” Mills said.

The former governor continued to criticize Mills’ spending priorities, buoyed by a massive amount of federal COVID-19 aid that has led to growing state surpluses. He has singled out the $850 relief checks approved by the Legislature this year, saying in the past that the money should have been used to subsidize heating oil prices.

LePage went further on Tuesday to say he would have looked at suspending all taxes during the pandemic. Mills defended the checks by noting their “wildly bipartisan” appeal in Augusta and saying they allowed Mainers to use the money how they saw fit.

“It belongs to the people,” she said. “It was right to give it back to them.”

Mills has also run on her 2021 move to fully fund essential K-12 costs at a statutory threshold of 55 percent. She deflected Republican criticism on that subject, including a recently unearthed video linked to a lesson on a state website that calls several terms examples of “covert racism,” calling it an effort to deflect from LePage’s record.

He stood by a recently announced education agenda that melds socially conservative critiques with a sweeping voucher program and a series of recommendations to schools for a “back to basics” curriculum and making sure meetings are accessible and published online. 

“I honestly, truthfully believe that we should be going back to reading, writing, math, civics and we should teach our children how to think independently and critically, not what to think,” he said.

The race between Mills and LePage was polling close in the spring. Public polls in recent weeks have moved in the incumbent’s direction. Southern Maine has shifted Democratic since LePage’s last election in 2014, making his path harder. 

Hunkler, who sat at 1 percent in an Emerson College poll released last month, ignored early questions to introduce himself to voters and said at one point that he would rather have committees run state departments than commissioners. His sharpest answers were on education, which he said is “failing our children.”

“There are some kids who are going to go to college, some people are going to be fishermen and I think we need to give much more local control to our schools,” he said.