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In what now feels like a daily reminder, we must insist once again that violence and threats of violence have no place in American politics.
Threats against officials are up, tempers are high, and people are understandably on high alert. That requires efforts from everyone to calm down, deescalate, and respect others.
It should go without saying that a gubernatorial candidate threatening to “deck” a staffer from another political party does not fit that bill, even if he thought that staffer got too close to him.
Political trackers aren’t exactly heroes as they follow candidates around and record them, typically trying to catch them saying or doing the wrong thing. The fact that such a job exists (now a mainstay in both Democratic and Republican campaign apparatuses) is a sad reflection of the hyperpolarized state of American politics.
We can see how these staffers would frustrate opposing campaigns and annoy candidates. But having an annoying job isn’t an invitation for threats of violence or actual violence.
So it should be pretty easy to see that former Gov. Paul LePage was in the wrong when he told a Maine Democratic Party staffer who was filming him, “Six feet away, or I’m going to deck you,” at a recent campaign event in Madawaska.
And yet, the Maine Republican Party has leaned into excuses and deflection for LePage’s most recent outburst.
“There are few Maine elected officials who have faced as many threats as Paul LePage,” Maine GOP Executive Director Jason Savage said after the incident.
There are also few Maine elected officials who have dished out as many threats as Paul LePage. That in no way justifies any threat made against him, but it does point to the hollowness seen in the GOP response.
In 2016, LePage left former state lawmaker (and current Maine Democratic Party Chair) Drew Gattine an expletive-laden voicemail and then said he’d like to duel Gattine. LePage also joked that he’d like to shoot BDN cartoonist George Danby in 2015.
The latest incident shows once again that, for a candidate who has supposedly learned and softened, LePage still sounds a lot like his old self.
We can understand how someone who has received threats themselves, particularly in the current political environment, could be uneasy about people approaching them in public. But we’d also expect that person would do their best to avoid doing the same thing to others, and to de-escalate annoying situations rather than bring threats of violence into the mix.
A tracker following a politician in an event isn’t exactly threatening, especially when they are a known entity. Frankly, their presence is par for the course on the campaign trail. According to Misha Linnehan, spokesperson for the Maine Democrats, this particular staffer had been at several other events with LePage.
It is alarming to see a situation with a political tracker get this heated here in Maine, and to see another apparently devolve into actual violence in Florida recently. A Republican tracker there was allegedly pushed to the ground by security for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate (and current U.S. Representative) Val Demings. A spokesperson from Demings’ campaign has defended that response.
Not all situations are the same, sure. And as of Thursday, police were still investigating the Florida incident. But it cannot be the case that violence or threats of violence are OK when people associated with one party do it, but wrong when the shoe is on the other foot.
From our perspective, aggression against political staffers just doing their jobs (even annoying ones) is wrong and dangerous no matter which party is involved. There should be no excuse for it, and there should be no place for it in American politics.