Letter to the editor: Coverage of campaign event unfair to LePage

The print headline on your Aug. 18 story (“Paul LePage threatens staffer for Democrats”) – about a man who came too close to the former governor at a Madawaska public appearance and was warned by Paul LePage to back off – is outrageous. After the author Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and is still in critical condition after someone came at him in public, who wouldn’t be alarmed?

This still photo is from a video shot by a Democratic Party staffer at a campaign event in Madawaska on Sunday, during which Republican gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage, left, told the videographer to back away, warning, “You come into my space, you’re going down. Enough is enough.”

Your reporter just had to mention that LePage, who is now quite thin, was eating a doughnut at the time. Who cares? It’s mentioned twice. We get it … he was eating a doughnut. Oink, oink, right?

I recently attended an afternoon backyard fundraiser for LePage’s reelection campaign at a home in South Freeport. He shook hands with everyone and mingled in the crowd for a while, then gave a 30-minute talk from the deck of the house. I found the newly slim ex-governor to be charming, soft-spoken, very funny, self-deprecating and incredibly smart as he outlined his plans for the state of Maine should he be reelected. (By the way, there was plenty of delicious food at the catered event, and I never saw LePage eat a thing!)

Come on, give your readers a break. Lots of Mainers absolutely adore LePage and despise Janet Mills. How about a story from one of his supporters, instead of a petty little nothingburger about how he asked someone, or as your writer put it, “growled” at them, to keep their distance?

Andrea Rouda
Freeport