PORTLAND, Maine — A Maine cabinet member who was forced out after offending rural residents, African-Americans and Native Americans all in one day said Friday that some of the comments attributed to him were misconstrued and others he didn't even say.
Two days after leaving his post as commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development, Philip Congdon said the allegations against him are false and that much has been made over nothing. He blamed politics and a state representative who wrote a letter to Maine's governor about his talk earlier this month in northern Maine.
"It's about to get messy and dirty really fast," Congdon said in a phone interview. "You just wait and watch."
Congdon's comments continued to draw criticism Friday from the NAACP and a Maine Indian tribe.
Maine's blunt-speaking governor, Paul LePage, who has been criticized himself for his choice of words, issued a statement saying, "I do not condone or tolerate the appearance of this type of behavior and I will not accept distractions from my jobs-creation agenda."
Congdon was quoted as saying affirmative action programs have contributed to a decline in higher education, that people of northern Maine were lacking in parenting skills and that it was time for them to "get off the reservation" if they wanted to succeed. He also said Maine's potato farmers were wasting their spuds by selling them for french fries rather than vodka.
He told the Sun Journal of Lewiston that when he spoke about affirmative action during a private meeting at a community college, "I thought I was talking to people who were sufficiently intelligent enough to understand my real meaning. I was mistaken."
http://www.itrevino.com/2011/04/30/member-of-maine-govs-cabinet-forced-out-for-shocking-racial-remarks/
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