Maine Governor Paul LePage burst onto the scene like a racist Koolaid man several weeks ago when he claimed that "90 percent" of the state's drug dealers are people of color and that he keeps a personal record of them stored in a three-ring binder.
LePage has now released the contents of his personal scrap book as requested by the ACLU and it does not corroborate his claim.
From the Portland Press Herald:
At first glance, the photos do not support LePage’s assertion that 90 percent of more of Maine’s accused heroin dealers are black and Hispanic, as more than half the photos in the binder appear to be of white people. However, it’s difficult to discern the race of some suspects because the contents of the binder, released to the media on CDs, were copied in black and white.
I once quipped that LePage's binder is probably just a collection of newspaper clippings and it appears I was at least partially correct.
On Monday, the contents of the binder indicated LePage had maintained what appeared to be an assortment of drug-related crime news, including booking mugshots, issued by county jails with reports clipped from Maine newspaper articles or printed from online news web sites.
It may be good news for the governor that his binder doesn't actually show what he claimed it would show because, in that case, it could have been evidence that his administration has engaged in unconstitutional racial profiling.
On the other hand, the case that Governor LePage is a liar and a racist just got that much stronger. LePage recently declared that "people of color" are "the enemy" and should be shot, but his own personal record that he curated shows that white people are the bigger threat.